


From the Last Whelming Sea

by roseofgalaxies (callmelyss)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Kylux Big Bang 2019, Light Angst, M/M, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Romance, Self-Discovery, Slow-ish burn, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21722590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmelyss/pseuds/roseofgalaxies
Summary: By now, Kylo might have recited the story himself, how it had been before, how there was once a mighty republic—or an empire—or both?—between the many planets. How it had fallen into war and chaos. How, in insolation, their world had changed, the oceans rising, the cities tumbling. How the people had changed afterward, taken to the life still possible under the waves.—Generations after the Republic, the Empire, the Force, and terrestrial civilization have fallen from memory, Kylo is a prince on the cusp of fulfilling his destiny as leader of his people, who live among the sunken remnants of the world before. That is, until he meets Hux, a cantankerous tinkerer with an affinity for technology and the old relics, who challenges his understanding of everything he thought he knew about the oceans, the galaxy, his family—and himself.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 76
Kudos: 101
Collections: Kylux Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the 2019 KBB. Prompt and artwork by the incomparable Katie's Ghost ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com)).
> 
> The story is finished, and new chapters will be posted each day this week. We hope you enjoy it!

It was a bright, clear day in the sunken city, like the morning after a spring storm, but Kylo Ren was in no mood for a parade.

He had one of the best views in this part of the abyssal plain, the highest room in the palace’s intact tower, overlooking the scattered remains his people had called home since the waters rose, and they dove under the waves. The city sat in the bottom of a basin, what might have been a valley once, surrounded by higher peaks and sloping hillsides. To the east and south lay the fishing grounds, brilliant with colorful reefs; to the north and west, the ruins of fallen ships, the steaming volcanic vents, and the open ocean beyond them. The faintest sunlight washed down from the surface, pale and diluted. Stronger by far were the multitude of bioluminescent lights, glowing softly but steadily, verdant and amber during the daybloom, lapuline and amaranthine during the night. The thoroughfares were already bustling below, the water lively, and the festivities’ route marked with bright pennants, gleaming metal. Waiting—yes, for him.

In two rotations of the hourglass, he would look on with his mother and pretend to listen as the sages recited the histories. As though he hadn’t heard it all before, countless times. How the old world had fallen away, under the cresting tide, the sea sweeping over the remains of a forgotten world, their great ships and shining empires drowned. How their people had, by necessity, changed. How his family, his mother’s family, guided them through it all, generations ago. How the tradition would continue with him, the crowned prince.

It would. He would affirm it in ninety cycles’ time. Take his place as Leia’s appointed heir, as he was always meant to do, as he had been taught to do since he was strong enough to swim beside her. He had looked down at their city every morning for as long as he could remember; in this respect, today was no different.

Kylo twitched his tail, moving away from the window. He considered returning to his bed, a nest of silken, woven weeds in a carved shell frame, still in disarray from the night before. He had always been prone to vivid dreams—a hereditary trait, Leia claimed and left it at that—but they felt different lately. Sharper. Clearer. Something was calling him out into the deeper canyons, well beyond the city’s borders, past the graveyard of old ships, their hulls greening with algae, past the stark hills, farther than he had ever gone. Like something catching at his dorsal fins, tugging. Although he always woke before he followed it.

If he went back to sleep, perhaps he could—

“Up and swimming, buddy!” a familiar voice called, his only warning before Poe swept into his rooms, already dressed in ceremonial armor, immaculate, polished, bright strands of copper wire linking the durasteel plates, dozens of small pieces salvaged and linked, passed down from one captain of the guard to the next, meticulously repaired. Even the speckled scales of his tail were spotless. He cradled his helmet against his hip. Flashed Kylo the same bright smile he had since they were children playing in the kelp. His cheerful expression faltered when he saw his face, but he rallied quickly. “Oh, good, you’re awake. You gotta get going, bud. We’re expected, you know.”

Kylo ran a hand through his hair, casting about for his vambraces. He nodded. “Right, yeah. Somewhere to be.”

* * *

They swam down through the palace together, past his mother’s antechamber and receiving hall, past the council’s rooms with their round tables, past his grandfather’s library where no one ventured, even the schools of tookafish which often darted through the corridors. His grandmother had been queen before Leia, but few spoke of her husband, both of them dead well before Kylo was born. He had learned not to ask about them, although there were portraits, mosaics done in shells and pearls and sea glass, decorating the long halls, his grandmother’s serene face, his grandfather’s less knowable, even rendered in stone. Beyond these were the etchings of the histories, simple figures showing the water crawling over the land, the sentients gathered at the edges, and finally his people as they are now, with their strong tails, as though it had always been this way. 

Kylo felt a prickling over his scalp as he glanced at them, although he had so often he no longer quite saw them. He lingered briefly, tracing the grooves with his fingertips, again feeling that flash of— _something_ , a humid breeze on his face, the sound of the tide and—“Kylo?” Poe had stopped and turned, was looking back at him, questioning.

He flicked his fins and went on, the two of them emerging from the great front doors, standing open as they had since his mother’s rule began. The courtyard was busier than usual, full of the queen’s guard and attendants and councilors in their heavy robes, so long they impeded their swimming. These last nodded to Kylo as he passed; he didn’t think he imagined the skepticism on their faces. There had always been comparisons, whom he took after most, mother or grandfather or uncle or the wandering father he had hardly known. He struggled to return their scrutiny, impassive, trying not to scowl. Relieved to follow Poe to the front gates where his mother and Rey were waiting.

Leia wore the robes and medal of her office, white fabric rippling in the gentle current around her. Her mouth quirked when they arrived, the only sign of her mood, her face otherwise schooled, neutral. She nodded briefly to Poe before he went to join the procession, his people armed with their spears and swords—not that they would need to use them on a day like today—and then she turned to Kylo, offering her cheek. “Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”

He kissed her. “Would you have started without me?”

Her brown eyes, much like his own, gleamed. “If necessary.” With that, she turned and entered the first chariot, fashioned from a single, enormous seafah shell and drawn by two giant sea snails, their spiral armor thick and opalescent, their soft horns waving in the warm light from the algae.

He and Rey would follow in the second chariot. He nodded to her as they boarded, trying for dignified, given the scrutiny. “Good morning, little sister,” he said, just as they began to move. Ostensibly, he held the reins, but they were lax in his hands; the beasts already knew where to go, following their pod leader.

Rey elbowed him none-too-gently in the ribs in response, heedless of her own jewelry and gauzy drapery. “I _knew_ this would make you more insufferable.”

“Better me than you,” he snapped, resisting the urge to shove her back. “Knowing you, you’d sink the sunken city before the end of your first day.”

She snorted in a flurry of bubbles. “That doesn’t even make sense, Kylo.”

“Just be quiet and wave.”

They moved through the city at a sedate pace, doing just that: waving to the seafolk congregated at the edges of the avenues, merpeople and aquatic lizardmen and wooly lumbering walruses and many-armed cephalopoids. Normally, one might spot messengers swimming above the buildings, but today, everything had been cleared, all business effectively shut down until the end of the ceremonies. Kylo looked on it all with muted interest. He had little opportunity to travel outside the royal grounds, but when he did, it was like this, everything halted for the sake of his presence, nothing like the day-to-day life he sometimes watched from his balcony. 

Perhaps it was only fair that everyone was staring at him now, given how often he watched them. _His_ people, descended from those original terrestrial sentients. Some smooth faces, some furred, some scaled. A host of limbs, fins and tentacles, arms and pinchers, claws and tails. He recognized them, broadly speaking, but he didn’t know them. Couldn’t.

“You look like you’re attending your own funeral,” Rey said under her breath, beaming at the crowd and lifting her hand. “What’s the matter with you? Did you swallow a spiny fish again?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, mostly ignoring her. A well-honed skill after nearly sixteen years of practice. “I didn’t sleep well.”

“It might be for the best,” Rey continued, as though he hadn’t answered. “If they saw you smile, they might panic and flee.”

“At least they’re spared the grating sound of your voice at this distance.”

The parade ended at the city center, where a large crowd had already congregated around the statue of some forgotten leader from the fallen world, the marble long ago worn smooth, perhaps even before the sea overtook it. Someone had ringed the figure’s neck with brightly colored kelp and sandflowers. As Kylo paused, studying the blurred features, another image flickered behind his eyes. The statue gazed down on him, whole. The buildings stood un-cracked under the sunlight. Starcraft whirred overhead. He looked up, startled, and it was gone again. He and Rey joined Leia on a dais in the middle of it all, surrounded by their murmuring subjects, watching them, expectant.

The sages, who kept the histories, who had been white-bearded and droning since he was a child, stood to make their recitation. “Once, before the seas rose, the people walked the land—“ their chief began.

And stopped. 

A tremor shook the buildings around them, sending vibrations through the water, and a few people gasped. Somewhere in the crowd, a child cried out in fear. Leia raised both hands, wordlessly asking for calm, and the people quieted, waited. Kylo reached for her, meaning to pull her out of the way of falling debris if necessary, gritting his teeth when he saw Poe had done the same. Rey thrashed her tail next to him, and her hand closed tight around his wrist, nails digging into his skin. When she was a child, she always hid during the earthquakes, and he had spent more than one afternoon lying on her bedroom floor, coaxing her out from behind a chest or under a table. They were the only thing that frightened her. 

“It’s just a small one,” Kylo told her, and although it went on for some minutes, that seemed to be so. The fault line lay several leagues west of them, and it wasn’t uncommon for the city to shake this way, for the sand to churn and the kelp to lash, as if subject to a strong wind. The last significant tremor had collapsed one of the watchtowers, but that was years ago, before Luke left them.

Briefly, Kylo closed his eyes, feeling unsettled, stomach queasy, although the quake had already begun to diminish, slow, and stop. When he opened them, it had.

The sage paused, looking to Leia for her guidance, or permission. She nodded, and he began the recitation again: “ _Once, before the seas rose…_ ” By now, Kylo might have recited the story himself, how it had been before, how there was once a mighty republic—or an empire—or both?—between the many planets. How it had fallen into war and chaos. How, in insolation, their world had changed, the oceans rising, the cities tumbling. And how the people had changed afterward, as was needful, and taken to what was life still possible beneath the waves. Here in the telling, there was the usual honoring of his family; he and Leia and Rey bowed their heads, benevolent, acknowledging. They were descended from those who led them into the waters.

Only this part still interested him, the oblique references to their power, the _Force_ , a mystical energy which granted its wielders untold talents. How his ancestor, their name long since lost, expended that power to save their people. Make a home for them here.

When they were younger, he and Rey had begged for more stories of the Force, although the surviving texts told them little. Leia rarely spoke of it, even now, a certain shadow crossing her features when they asked. But Uncle Luke—

Kylo shook his head, meaning to clear it, to focus. He listened, or tried to.

Twenty generations since the rising, or more. No one knew for certain. They were an adaptive people as he understood it, by nature or design. Nothing went to waste down here, the city’s walls repaired with silt and glass. Everything lit by bioluminescence, powered by the thermal vents. What they could not grow or craft, they traded from the wanderers, the small clans who lived outside the city and explored the wide oceans. _Keep your mind here_ , Leia had told him more than once, when he brought up Luke or the Force or venturing outside the walls. There had been unrest in her youth, division into factions that had nearly cost them everything, but the city remained tranquil now and had these past twenty-five years.

Kylo’s attention wandered again during the recounting of the lineages, the old family names carved into the stone itself; he looked out over the crowd and to the buildings beyond, the sea past that. A pale flash in the distance caught his eye. A lone merperson traveled past the city’s glow out into the darker water, towards the ancient battlefield of ships in the north. He watched until they swam out of sight, beyond the safety of the walls, the patrolling guard. Where there were certainly predators, sharks and huge venomous medusas and demonsquid. _You’d have to be desperate or stupid or both to go out there alone_ , Poe told him once.

It was common knowledge the wandering merfolk didn’t look forward to long lives.

Kylo was still staring in that direction when the minister came to the end of the genealogies, and startled at the sound of his own name, his regnal name, the one he’d chosen when he came of age, and the subsequent applause. Cheering. He looked over the assembled sentients, took in their celebrations, the froth they made with limbs and tails. He could feel, most of all, Leia’s eyes on him, assessing, taking note of his demeanor, his reaction. Someone else, like Rey or Poe, might have smiled at them at all, or waved, but he only managed to nod and lift his hand and hoped he looked solemn and dignified rather than—well.

* * *

The journey back to the palace was longer, taking them farther out into the city’s concentric rings. Not the poorest districts; those were on the very edge of everything, where the wall was low and crumbling, shelters cobbled together from whatever leftovers their inhabitants could find. Kylo had never been out that far, even with the guard, although he had heard enough of the stories about it, those parts the nameless and desperate called home. Where his father may have been just then, inhabiting some rusty cantina a strong eddy could carry away, if he wasn’t out foraging or scheming.

They were halfway back to the palace when Kylo felt it again: that same, strong pull he had in his dream the night before. From the same direction he had seen the merperson swim during the ceremonies, out in unprotected waters.

He couldn’t explain the compulsion to leave the chariot. Ignored Rey’s mumble of protest, _hey_ , _idiot, what are you doing_ , and the startled murmurs of the assembled people. He swam quickly over the crowd, too quickly for anyone to stop him, although he doubted anyone would think to try. After all, he wasn’t doing anything _wrong_ , exactly, just unexpected.

Swimming above the city, he could navigate it more easily; he was most accustomed to this view, the streets and alleys like a maze below him, interspersed with coral and seagrass. Heavier concentrations in what must have been squares once, or perhaps small parks. His mother’s staff kept extensive gardens around the palace, although they were also practical, supplementing the food harvested and gathered from around the city limits. Then, that was how Leia was about everything: pragmatic. He could hear her now, when she had realized he had chased some whim away from the parade. _You must resist distractions, Kylo. They’re plentiful, trust me_. 

If he turned back now and bribed Rey, she might never know he had gone.

Kylo swam farther.

If he ventured upward, some two or three thousand meters, chasing the weak light, he would find the surface. Empty of civilization, although rumor had it that some wild islands remained, what were once high peaks or plateaus. These didn’t especially interest him—hadn’t, the few times he’d gone—the empty sky, the clouds, the bright sun. The seas held greater and more appealing mysteries, everything they’d taken and consumed, those still-veiled secrets. And perhaps, perhaps now he was swimming towards a possible answer.

He didn’t know what battle or battles had taken place over what was now a massive, submerged plain, whether they had fought over territory or wealth or simple enmity. Only that the landscape was still marked by it, by the fallen ships, their sharp-edged fins and the bubbled glass viewports. The earthquake had shifted them anew, some now uncovered, others buried again. He traced the edge of the first he came upon, spherical with two rounded limbs extending from either side. Kylo couldn’t picture how they would have moved, what it must have been like to see them, let alone fly them.

He slowed as he swam through the ruins, some of his sense of purpose ebbing. It was much darker here outside the city’s glowing lights and stands of coral, and it felt colder, although he knew the water had not especially changed, still warmed by the vents nearby. Kylo touched the long snout of another ship, its split wings tilted at a drunken angle. Maybe there _was_ nothing to any of this, merely the last vestiges of a world long passed.

He had decided to turn and leave when he caught sight of him.

The stranger was a slight merman around Kylo’s age, and even in the gloom, his bright hair and fair skin would have stood out, vivid despite the dark. But his _tail_ caught Kylo’s attention first and held it: an inky blue, as wine-dark as the sea itself, and stippled with thousands of glittering specks, like gems, or sparks, or distant stars, like—he had never seen anything like this merman’s tail, except perhaps the night sky when he was very young.

He was moving, flurried, around one of the sunken ships, one of those near-triangular bodies about twenty meters off, and tugging at a piece of paneling, evidently trying to get inside. _That will never open_ , Kylo wanted to warn him; the royal engineers had told him several times that there was little left of use on the old ships, the tech long obsolete, and they were best not bothered with, save for scavenging their durasteel. But then the other merman did something complicated with his hands, and the ship’s outer wall popped open and slid free, revealing the unlit interior of the craft. Kylo watched as he swam inside, seemingly unbothered by the dark. But then, this was the sort of person who foraged alone out here. Likely the shadows inside the ship troubled him not at all.

Nonetheless, Kylo lingered and waited for him to reemerge. This was one of his subjects, however reckless and strange his behavior, and he shouldn’t leave him out here.

And true: he wanted to see.

The merman reappeared after some slow minutes, holding a small, gleaming metal cylinder with a tangle of wires extending from it. He was turning the piece this way and that under a hand-light, of a kind Kylo didn’t recognize. But even at this distance, he could see he was smiling. He ventured closer, curious, wanting to understand what was worth the journey out here, but the movement was too abrupt, and the other startled, chin jerking in his direction.

Kylo put out a hand, uncertain what he intended, to command him or— “Wait,” he said, just before the merman flicked his tail fins and jetted deeper into the ruins. “Hey!”

There was no reason to follow him, to push himself through the water with his own powerful tail, but he did, kicking after the scavenger. It wasn’t easy to navigate the fallen ships, a labyrinth of rock and metal and shadow; Kylo twisted hard to avoid colliding with more than one hull, struggling to keep that shining tail in view as he did. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he tried calling, but the merman only swam faster, moving more smoothly with his slighter frame and longer fins, ducking under protrusions where Kylo couldn’t directly follow. Finally, he slipped under the wing of a ship, wriggling through the narrow gap above the sand, forcing Kylo to go the longer way around. When he came to the subsequent turn—two boxier crafts catty-corner to each other—and rounded it, he had lost sight of him completely. He stopped at the intersection of the wrecks, turning in place, but there was nothing.

Nothing except for the shine of metal in the sand below him, just below the wing of one ship, visible despite the darkness. The piece from the wreck, he realized, drifting down to retrieve it. Not large at all—it fit neatly in his hand. It wasn’t especially bright either, the way pieces people took from the wrecks usually were, although the wiring could be used for binding or mending, he supposed. A piece of junk otherwise, by all appearances. Kylo frowned, unsure what to make of it. Probably he should just leave it there on the ocean floor, but he didn’t. Couldn’t drop it, curling his fingers around it instead. He spared one more look into the deep for some flash of movement, any meager illumination hitting shining scales. But there was nothing, only the water and the bones of the long-dead ships.

* * *

“You want me to what?” Poe asked.

Kylo had returned to the palace well after the conclusion of the day’s banquet, nominally in his honor, weary from the chase and the long swim home. He tried to skulk up to his rooms without being noticed, but there was little hope of that, and he had borne another hour of Leia’s scrutiny and carefully posed questions. Where had he gone? Was he unwell? Only for a swim, he insisted. And he was fine; he had had a headache and didn’t want to spoil the celebrations. He thought he had succeeded at not squirming under that sharp focus, still like the edge of a razor shell, no matter how old he was. He delivered his answers calmly and looked her in the eye, and finally, she had waved him away.

Afterward, he went looking for Poe to ask for his help.

“Find a merman,” Kylo explained again. He turned the cylinder in his hands. He had stowed it on the way in. Not that his mother would disapprove—there were relics enough in the palace —not that there was any reason to hide it, but it felt somehow private, what had happened outside the city. It wasn’t for others’ attention. He wouldn’t have involved anyone else at all, only it would be conspicuous if he went looking for the scavenger himself. And he didn’t begin to know where to search. Poe, at least, had resources. “He has a blue tail. Darker than mine, but it’s—it sort of glitters? Not very broad. Red hair.”

Poe’s brow furrowed. “And this merman, he’s of interest? To the crown?”

Not strictly speaking. He was only of interest to Kylo, but the two would be synonymous someday. Although he wouldn’t dwell on that just now.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s important that I find him and speak to him.”

“You want me to bring him here? Imprison him?”

“No!” Kylo shook his head, emphatic. “Not yet anyway. Just find him and tell me where he is. He isn’t—he isn’t in trouble or anything.” It wasn’t illegal to swim in the ruins. Only foolhardy. Dangerous.

“Okay,” Poe agreed. “Tell me one thing first, though, bud. Is everything all right? You kind of confused everyone. Swimming away like that.”

Kylo spun the cylinder between his fingers, examining it more closely in the hall’s light. He still had no notion of what it was or what it did. It didn’t _look_ important, not like the sort of thing someone should risk their life for. And yet. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine,” he told Poe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the Herman Melville poem _Clarel_.
> 
> ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Poe's help, Kylo tracks down the merman from the ruins.

Three squat pieces of metal. A bundle of cabling. An interior of which he couldn’t make any sense. Kylo shook the cylinder, hoping it might do something different this time. (It didn’t. Not even a promising rattle.)

Two weeks had passed since he encountered the merman in the ruins, and still the kriffing thing hadn’t given up any of its secrets. There had been no word from Poe either. Only this puzzle box, only his dreams, increasingly vague, murky, unsettled, and those brief glimmers, visions of a world he’d never seen. Kylo shuffled through the wires again, prodding each end with a fingertip. No reaction. He had spent some time yesterday interrogating the royal engineers, asking about how the tech they salvaged worked. _Most of it doesn’t, your Highness_ , they explained, halting, apparently consternated by his interest. _Although many of the structures have survived remarkably well, the power sources have long since lost their energy—and we don’t have the means to replace them. So we repurpose._

 _Why do you ask_ , they weren’t quite brave enough to question. And he, in turn, would not show them the piece he had found in the ruins. He had kept it safe, here in his rooms, out of sight. Not that it mattered if anyone saw. Not that it was under threat.

It was just. He didn’t feel inclined to share it. That was all.

There was a collection of artifacts maintained in the palace, rarely visited by anyone, but those too remained inert. That afternoon, he swam from pedestal to pedestal, peering at the relics under the glass domes, as he had done on occasion as a child, when especially bored, but they were as inscrutable to him as the Force, as the time before the rising. He could only guess what any of it meant, the irregular shapes and inscribed metal, some pieces he knew to be weapons. Others for communication. There were part of a droid, a walking machine, in one of the largest displays, but its crystalline eyes had been dim for centuries, millennia.

He tapped on the side of the cylinder, feeling the vibrations inside yet again. It was partly hollow, he had determined. Made of durasteel, as were the ships and the plating on more than a few houses and his own vambraces—that much he knew. The alloy was valued and widely used among his people, good for weapons and protection. They couldn’t make it themselves, however, only carefully collected and preserved it, passed down through generations. This small chunk likely wasn’t worth much, although maybe to a scavenger, it would be.

Right. Maybe it wasn’t anything special, just a piece to trade. There were junkers who would take anything from the ancient wrecks, or so he’d heard. The wanderers, likewise, sought durasteel, cabling, whatever they could find. Although there must be easier work than that. Safer, too.

Kylo twisted a wire around his finger.

“What are you doing?” a voice asked in the vicinity of his shoulder, and he jumped. He shoved he cylinder out of sight under a piece of flimsi and whirled, coming eye-to-eye with his sister, who was watching him, her arms crossed over her tunic.

Typical of her to be precisely where he didn’t want her to be. But that had been true since she was born, when he was ten and had no desire for a younger sibling.

“What do you want, Rey?” he growled.

“You’ve been secretive,” she accused. “And gloomy. Or, gloomier than usual.”

“I haven’t,” Kylo shot back. “I’ve been— _thinking._ But I understand you’re unfamiliar with the concept.”

She cupped both hands over her abdomen, miming a gut wound. “Oh, a brilliant rejoinder, I am slain. I hope you haven’t been thinking of insults; you’re awful at it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Very funny. Now, what do you want?”

She shrugged and fiddled with a shell on his desk. “Only to see what has you sequestered up here. You’ve barely come out of your room since the parade. Mum’s convinced you’re having second thoughts.” Rey stared at him, then, catching some reaction in his expression; her eyes went wide, and she poked him—hard—in the upper arm. “Oh my. _Stars_. You are, aren’t you? Kylo!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kylo snapped and shrugged her off. “I’m just trying to take this seriously. Besides, it’s not as though I have a choice.”

He didn’t mean to blurt that part, the thought that had been rolling around in his head for months. Even if he wanted something different, it wouldn’t matter. He would still be here, about to be, do this. His mother’s eldest child. He had been born into it, raised for it. There were no other options.

Rey studied him more closely, not missing his tone. “Do you want one? A choice?”

They had never talked about it, the possibility that he wouldn’t. He didn’t know how Rey felt about it—if she would want to, if she had considered it. The matter had been clear enough between his mother and uncle Luke, although they were twins with an equal stake; she had always been the heir apparent. She had possessed an interest in governance; he hadn’t, more concerned with study, the histories and the Force. The matter was simpler still with Luke gone, disappeared into the hills when Kylo was still young; his mother’s rule had gone unchallenged since then. It was best not to risk upheaval, his sternest mental voice—Leia’s—reminded him. Even if Rey wanted to, even if he didn’t (he did). There wasn’t anything else.

He shook his head. “Never mind. No. I don’t. I don’t need one. This is what I’m meant to do and—I want to do it.”

“Right.” She kicked her tail fin up so that she was looking down at him, her three buns hanging askew. Like she had when she was a fry and wanted his attention. “So, if you’re quite finished moping, you could come downstairs and spar with me. It’s a nice day out, you know.”

Kylo didn’t quite smile; he couldn’t allow her the satisfaction. “Fine.”

* * *

Loath as he was to admit it, he did feel better after an afternoon of tussling with Rey in the practice ring. She had bested him at staffs, as usual, her weapon of choice, but they were more equal with spears, and he the better of the two with swords. At one point, several members of the guard had stopped to watch them, a few even calling out encouragement. There was one in particular, he knew, who was a friend of Rey’s, _Finn_ , newly sworn to service, and he cheered and whooped every time she scored a hit. Kylo thought he saw Leia pass by, and perhaps pause, a flicker of her white raiment, but when he looked up again, she was gone.

Poe was waiting for him when they finally separated several bouts later, and Kylo forgot his bruises and his exhaustion, wondering if this meant. If finally. His stomach swooped at the expression on his friend’s face, and he followed him away from the others, to a small alcove. Kelp rippled along the walls, and several small akkfish swam among the green-violet strands, but beyond that, the place was empty, free of listening ears and wagging tongues.

“Well?” Kylo asked.

“My people tracked a merman like the one you saw to a place in the outer ring of the city,” Poe explained. “It’s—not a good area, Kylo. Scavengers. Criminals. Undesirables, you get it.”

He made a dismissive gesture. That much he had expected; prosperous seafolk didn’t bother scavenging. “But you found him. You know where he is?” And there was no reason why it should matter, why he should care, but he wanted to know what the cylinder was, what it meant, what any of it meant, why the merman had been out in the ruins to begin with. And why he had fled when Kylo called to him.

He wouldn’t mind a closer look at that tail either, if he was honest.

Poe stared at him, mouth slack, before answering. “Yeah, I’ve got a location, but, bud. You could just let me bring him here. Tell me what he did, and I’ll handle it.“

“He didn’t do anything,” Kylo repeated, impatient. “Only he has information that’s valuable to me—to the crown. On. Technological matters.”

“Technological matters,” Poe repeated slowly. “Does Leia know about this?”

Kylo scowled. He and Poe had been friends since they were small, Poe only a few years his senior, and his mother, Shara, had been captain of the guard before him. But Poe was increasingly loyal to Leia after taking the post himself. If he suspected she would disapprove of something, it didn’t matter that Kylo had been his first friend, that they had played out in the coral, had dared each other to swim over the wall, and told each other all of their secrets, their fears and dreams. Poe was Queen’s guard now, and that meant his first allegiance was to Kylo’s mother, not to him.

“She’s given me leave to pursue my own inquiries,” he said. In a way, this was true; Leia had increased a number of his responsibilities lately. If he told her it was a matter of security, she wouldn’t question it. May even be proud of him.

Skepticism crept over Poe’s face. “If you say so, Kylo. But I can at least go with you.”

He shook his head. If the merman had run from him, he could imagine how he would react to the royal guard showing up at his front door. “Not necessary. Just tell me where to go.”

* * *

Poe’s directions took him through the city, well beyond the districts where the parade had gone weeks ago, and into the more transient parts of town. The streets out there were loose sand, the buildings mostly cobbled-together scrap, the sort of place that a minor tempest would have knocked flat. According to his mother, the edges of the city were always in flux and often being rebuilt, never the same place twice. When he was younger, before he had heard the stories about his father, Kylo asked how she knew so much about those tough edges where the wall was low or nonexistent, trying to imagine his regal mother in such a place. She had pressed her lips in a tight line and not spoken more of it.

As Kylo swam through these shabbier areas, he was aware of the attention on him, some from behind sealed-up windows and mud hovels. He had done his best not to stick out too much, had draped a long olive-colored poncho over his torso and armor, and tucked the cylinder into its pocket. But even that, apparently, could not disguise the fact that he was a stranger. A few laweless types lingered on the corner, muttering when he passed. A massive cephalopoid with eight arms—all of them occupied—was managing a food cart on the street opposite, selling roasted skewered squid and steamed seaweed buns. Another was hawking “authentic” pre-Rise treasures, so much shining flotsam.

He had ventured this way once before, not long after Luke left, hoping to find him and ask him to come back, that Leia needed him and so did he, but the guard had caught up with him before he had gotten very far and escorted him home again, a painful sort of understanding in Shara’s eyes. _C’mon, kid, let’s not worry your mother._ But now Kylo swam farther still, passing the battered cantinas and shops and one sinister-looking cave out of which peered a set of three massive glowing eyes. Finally, he crossed the outer borders of the city, over the low edge of the wall, not even to his waist here, and looked out at the wild ocean beyond. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the sharp dorsal fin of a shark circling in the distance.

Finally, Kylo came to the structure Poe had described, a bizarre upright machine standing on four legs, with a boxy body, and a squarish head like some sort of ungainly terrestrial creature. It stood, unmoving, among the seagrass, and a school of darting fish parted around it. Beyond it, several round, smooth stones outlined a square of garden, green and cerulean buds standing up from the bed, a driftwood stump jutting from one end. A single bioluminescent lantern hung from the underside of the place, and this Kylo approached, cautiously, suddenly unsure of his decision to follow his curiosity this far. How would he—? He couldn’t recall the last time he had gone somewhere without being invited and announced first. He tapped on the underside of the structure with his knuckles, producing a hollow _clang_.

And: nothing.

He waited underneath the still machine, feeling increasingly foolish. Maybe the other merman simply wasn’t here. Maybe Poe’s information had been faulty. This place looked nearly abandoned after all; the joints of the walker were furry with algae; and surely no one would live out here voluntarily. But he had also come all this way, the cylinder heavy in his pocket, dreams still churning, stirring silt and weeds. He couldn’t, wouldn’t just give up. He banged louder this time, feeling the metal vibrate under his fist.

Another lull followed, but before he could turn or reach out to knock again, something _groaned_ , deep within the structure in front of him, and then the hatch under which he waited began to lower, and a head popped out, upside down, haloed by red hair. A pair of green eyes, magnified several times by a pair of goggles, stared at him.

No: _glowered_ at him. Brows clenched, mouth downturned with distaste. Like Kylo was a lamprey stuck to his skin, inconvenient and unwelcome.

“Well, what is it?” the merman from the sunken battlefield demanded after a beat, his voice clipped. “Who are you and what do you want?”

For a moment, he couldn’t find his voice. No one—no one had ever talked to him like that, brusque and impatient and, well, rude. “I’m Kylo,” he said. “I was hoping to speak with you.”

He looked up him and down once, then replied, “Not interested.” And disappeared from sight again; the hatch creaked, as though it would close after him.

“Wait!” Kylo shouted. “I have this.” 

He reached into his poncho for the cylinder, waving in front of him like a beacon.

The merman re-emerged, his eyes widening in recognition when he caught sight of the lost piece. His gaze snapped back to Kylo. “It’s _you_ ,” he said, the way one might say ‘it’s whale shit.’ “You're the arsehole who chased me!”

“I didn’t chase you; you swam away for no reason,” Kylo shot back. He snatched the cylinder out of reach when the scavenger grabbed for it, holding it well away. 

“That’s _mine_ ,” he growled, halfway out of the transport now. One thin arm was bandaged with seaweed, Kylo saw. “Give it here.”

“It isn’t,” he replied easily, although his pulse was tripping. “You dropped it and I found it. That makes it mine. That’s how scavenging works, isn’t it?”

His brow furrowed at that, and he crossed his arms; the point was inarguable. “You’ve no use for it,” he tried instead. “I do.”

“I might,” Kylo said. “It’s a very important…something.”

“Oh, please, you don’t even know what it is!” Lunging, he made another aborted grab for the cylinder, and Kylo jerked it away a second time.

“Stop that.” He frowned. “Listen, you can have it.”

The merman stilled, treating him to a look that could only be called incredulous. He was still upside down, but he cocked his head, regarding Kylo, skeptical. “I can?”

“Yes,” he declared, all magnanimity. “If you talk to me.”

He gawked in return, before recovering his scowl. “I _am_ talking to you,” he pointed out. “Despite it being an utter waste of my time.”

Kylo sniffed. “Well, if that’s how you really feel.” He started to stow the cylinder and swim away. He didn’t need to be spoken to like this. "It’s my time I’ve wasted, coming out here." 

Silence followed him, and he was nearly back to the city wall, the outer rim rising beyond it, when it was interrupted by a sudden, “Wait!”

Kylo turned slowly, one eyebrow raised.

The other merman had swum out from his hiding place; his tail glittered as vividly as Kylo remembered, a tapestry of inky blue and silvery speckles. He’d shoved his goggles down around his neck and was floating in place, arms hugging his chest, expression petulant. “What do you want to know?”

It was difficult not to grin. He imagined he didn’t quite succeed, but no matter. “How about your name for starters?”

“Oh. It’s Hux.”

* * *

The interior of Hux’s home—a structure he called an armored transport, whatever that meant—was filled with more junk scavenged from the nearby wreckages. Bundles of cabling and stripped wire hung from the walls and ceiling. Parts were piled in the corners and scattered over a wide bench Hux apparently used as a work table. Much of it was in various states of dismantlement or repair. Other pieces had been reconfigured, Kylo thought, welded together to form a more complete whole, perhaps in their original formation, perhaps not. A few devices blinked faintly on the bench, and Kylo regarded them with particular interest, reaching for them. In all his life, he’d never seen recovered tech that _worked_. But Hux warned him off with a barked, “Don’t touch that, don’t touch _anything_ ,” before he could get a closer look.

There were other things, too, more bioluminescent lanterns and fragments of ceramic and other goods made here in the city, and an assortment of sea life, including a wide scattering of barnacles over the wall and a large, pulsating violet anemone in one corner, the remains of an unlucky fish still caught in its tendrils. A round, orange sealinx reclined on one cluttered shelf, snoring quietly, bubbles streaming from its blunt noise. It cracked open one amber eye to look at Kylo as he passed; its long whiskers twitched.

“That’s Millicent,” Hux explained. “She doesn’t like strangers. And nor do I.” He was holding the cylinder Kylo had offered him as though he might snatch it away again.

“Like I said, I’m Kylo,” he repeated. He held a hand out to Millicent, who regarded it with studied disinterest, then yawned. “So, not a stranger.”

Hux snorted. “Telling me your name doesn’t make you not a stranger.” 

“It would for most people.”

“And why is that?” He had already turned his attention to the cylinder and produced a long, thin tool, crackling with yellow sparks at the end. “Don’t touch that.”

Kylo jerked his hand away from a pile of plexidiscs. “Because I’m the prince,” he said, in answer to Hux’s question.

“Of course you are,” he huffed, not looking up from his tinkering. “Millie, better practice your curtsey, love.”

“I _am_ ,” Kylo told him, more surprised than offended. He had never had to convince anyone of that fact before; it was a given, the fulcrum of his reality.

Hux stopped what he was doing and looked up at him then, blinking. “Wait. Are you really?”

“I’m Kylo,” he said a third time. “ _Prince_ Kylo. How many Kylos do you know?”

“None, since it’s a phenomenally stupid name,” Hux said, laying down his gadgets for a moment. “But I thought the prince was called something else.”

He had been, of course, for years. Had changed it not long after he came of age, wanting his own name, his regnal name. His mother and grandmother had been less drastic in their choices— _Leia Organa_ and _Padmé Amidala_ —but he had wanted something more than that, something that was his. Not the name of an abandoned boy, but what would be his legacy. Leia had given him one of her long, considering looks at the declaration, but didn’t stop him. “Well, it’s Kylo now,” he said, trying not to sound stung by the insult. Not quite managing, he suspected.

“If you say so, your majesty,” Hux said, dryly, and went back to his work, his attention fully on the cylinder. “But that does beg the question: what the kriff are you doing all the way out here for? Just to bring me this?”

“What were _you_ doing in the ruins?” Kylo demanded in turn, not inclined to answer. 

“Scavenging, obviously,” Hux said. He slid the tool over the cylinder’s wiring, and it lit up, brilliantly, for an instant.

Kylo shifted closer, wanting a better look, but wary of the sparks. And being told off again. Hux was smaller than he was by a decent margin, but he had his choice of weapons, projectiles. Even—potentially—an angry sealinx. “Yes, but why? For what?”

“I was looking for parts. The earthquake stirred everything up again; that meant there was an opportunity to find something new.” He gestured to the cylinder. “This is a cycler, by the way. It helps the ship communicate information. Navigation, speed. It’s a vital part. I didn’t think I would find one intact. Not here.”

“A cycler,” Kylo repeated, his interest piqued at the explanation. No one had been able to tell him as much in weeks. Or years. Perhaps ever. “Is it very valuable?”

“You mean as decoration?” Hux asked, voice acrid with disdain. “No, I expect it would be fairly worthless as a trinket. The durasteel might fetch a few portions.”

“What did you want it for, then?” 

“To make it work,” Hux said. Surprisingly softly. When Kylo looked up at him, he was staring down at the cylinder, almost tenderly, stroking the edge of it. His gaze skittered away when he met Kylo’s, and he coughed and set it down on the workbench. “Not that it’s any of your concern. Your Majesty.” _Whale shit_ again.

But Kylo was too amazed by this declaration to be bothered. “You can do that? Fix the old technology?”

“I try to,” Hux said, primly. “Sometimes, I succeed.”

“How did you learn—to do that?” Kylo swam closer. “How do you know about any of this?”

His cheeks turned faintly red in the cool lighting. “I taught myself mainly. There was more when I figured out how to power up one of the ship’s computers. I could look up schematics, how things worked. It’s been slow going. Taken years.”

 _A computer?_ The only computers he knew of were slow, semi-organic things, constructed by his own people and of limited use. They didn’t include information from before the rising, let alone anything about how the tech worked.

This was—impossible. Far more than he expected.

“Show me,” he demanded, perhaps too harshly.

The set of Hux’s narrow jaw turned stubborn then; his eyes hardened, darkened. “No.”

Shock jolted through Kylo. Few people ever refused him anything so plainly, really only his mother and Rey. He glared back at Hux, beginning to lose his patience, temper flaring. “Why not?” 

“Because I don’t know you!” Hux repeated, still more sharply, and pushed him towards the door, thin hands hard through the poncho. “And I don't owe you anything. Thank you for the cycler, _Prince Kylo_. But you should go. Back wherever it is you came from. Now.”

And Kylo could have—could have done any number of things, pushed him back or threatened him or used any of his authority to take what he wanted. But when Hux touched him, a strange frisson of energy went through him, and for a moment, he thought he again saw something, a flash of a dream, a memory, or a vision, a ship careening overhead, too fast and out of control. He blinked, trying to steady himself, but Hux had pushed him towards the open hatch, and he was too stunned to protest, swimming back out of the transport, unsteady, and the entrance groaned closed behind him before he could say or do anything more. 

Kylo stayed there for a time, looking up at it, and knew only one thing: he would be back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find us in the following places:
> 
> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo returns to see Hux, with mixed results.

“I could.” Kylo tried to sound imperious. “I could _order_ you to show me.”

Hux pivoted just long enough to quirk an eyebrow at him, his meaning clear: _go ahead and try, Your Highness._

They were in Hux’s garden today, or, rather, Hux was in his garden, tending to the shoots and sprouts, picking the parasites off the blades and clearing the dead growth while Kylo floated a safe distance away. He had learned quickly that Hux wasn’t above kicking up sea nettles or a stingray or, most memorably, a spiny urchin to discourage his loitering. (The abrasions on his face had been difficult to explain.) He had not allowed Kylo back inside the transport since the first day—now a week past—and only scowled when he attempted conversation.

But then, Kylo had been subject to the sour and quietly disapproving grimaces of his mother’s councillors for the better part of his life. _It’ll take more than a few dirty looks to scare me off_ , he thought at Hux’s turned back, specifically the sharp jut of his shoulder blades. Hux was lightly built, clearly made for quick, agile swimming, and his dorsal fins fanned, long and diaphanous, behind his tail. He could move nearly silently, too, and Kylo felt somewhat mollified at losing him in the ruins; he could probably outpace a skate if he wanted to. As Kylo studied him, his attention turned, as it often did, to the eye-catching pattern on Hux’s tail, like swirling constellations. That was the one consolation of his indifference; Kylo could look as much as he liked.

“I can feel you staring, you know,” Hux snapped without turning. “That’s rude, if no one’s told you.”

He flushed. Maybe not _as_ much as he liked. “Your scales,” he said, instead of answering the barb. “I’ve never seen any like them.”

He stiffened, back straight, fins flicking down flat. “I don’t think they’re especially interesting.” His voice quieter but no less brittle for that fact.” Then, softer still: “My mother liked them. She said they must be a sign of something.”

“Your mother?” It was the first personal thing, aside from his name, that Hux had said to him.

“Yes, well.” He returned to his task, prying loose the half-buried stump at the edge of the garden. It rocked in his grip, but didn’t come free. “She’s dead now.”

Kylo watched him, not speaking for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What about your father?”

The deadwood slipped from Hux’s hands, sending him tumbling backward, his tail thrashing before he righted himself. He cursed under his breath and whirled on Kylo, eyes hard. “What about yours?” he growled. “I may live all the way out here, but I still hear the gossip.”

Kylo did flinch this time; it would be dishonest to say that blow didn’t land, with all the pinpoint accuracy of a thrown spear. “That isn’t anyone’s business,” he said, when he had unclenched his teeth.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Hux said, returning to the submerged driftwood. He swam around it once, then grabbed a different branch, attempting to move it from another angle. “It isn’t my business. I’m relieved you understand the concept. Just as my affairs are none of yours.” He grunted, spindly arms straining, propelling himself backward as he pulled. Still nothing.

“Hey, let me help you with that,” Kylo said, forgetting his caution and swimming over. He took hold of the stump next to Hux, the closest he’d yet been to him. Not that that mattered, of course; it was only a question of what Hux could tell him of the drowned world (and still refused).

“I don’t need help,” he sniffed. 

“Obviously.” He rolled his eyes. “Here, just pull on one-two- _three_.” He tugged hard, not waiting to see if Hux did, too. Was surprised when he actually did start to join in, straining next to Kylo, their tails stirring up clouds of silt. The stump rocked slightly, but nothing more. “Kriff. Try again?” They did, to the point when Kylo’s arms had begun to ache.

“It’s useless,” Hux said, letting go. 

“No, come on, one more try.” Kylo nudged him with one arm, and he startled. “I think we’ve loosened it.”

He huffed, trailing bubbles. “If you say so, Your Grace.”

Kylo counted again, and once again, they pulled in unison. For a moment, he thought Hux must be right; the driftwood was too entrenched, and it wouldn’t come free. But as they worked, an odd sensation started at the base of his skull. Not pain—nothing so stark as that, no, but a sort of buzzing, and for the briefest moment, he thought it he could _see_ the roots where they were sunk into the seabed, below the loose surface layer. A bright sensation thrilled down to his hands, and then everything _tilted_ , just before they yanked the stump free, and fell towards them in a spray of sand. Kylo had to kick quickly to avoid getting pinned.

He checked to see that Hux was clear, then grinned at his obvious shock. “See, I told you it would work.”

Hux stared at him, breathing hard, looking between Kylo and the dislodged stump. “What did you—did you do something?”

Kylo tilted his head. “I pulled, same as you.”

“Right. Of course.” He narrowed his eyes, suspicious, then shook his head. Went about filling in the displaced silt, leveling it. Ignoring him again. 

“You know, when someone helps you, it’s polite to say ‘thank you,’” Kylo said. “In case no one’s told you.”

Hux didn’t look up from his task. “I didn’t ask for help.”

He threw up his hands. He had had people not like him before—more than a few, if he was honest, but no one had ever been this _prickly_. “Honestly, what is your problem? I gave you back your trinket—”

“Cycler,” Hux corrected. He was rearranging the border of the garden, forming a neat rectangle. 

“Whatever. I just helped you, and you’re still being a—a—“

He paused, hands on his hips, mouth quirked in the nearest thing Kylo had seen to a smile on him. “A what?”

“An _asshole_ ,” he declared.

“Maybe I just don’t think I’m obligated to be nice to you because your mother runs the city. Atypical as that must be for you.”

He scowled at the implication.“You don’t know anything about me.”

“And I don’t especially care to, given your insistence on invading my home and asking inane questions,” Hux returned. He started gathering up his tools, replacing them in a sling that crossed over his narrow chest. “I don’t even know why you’re _here_. Shouldn’t you be governing?”

“There’s nothing for me to do yet,” Kylo muttered. Which wasn’t entirely true, he knew; he was meant to be learning, sitting in on councils so as to better understanding the needs of their people, as he had been since he was thirteen. But it was static, staid, the same seasons from year to year, and the advice always the same: stay the course.

Hux made a small, derisive noise. “So you’re bored, and this is your entertainment. As I thought.” Equipment stowed, he swam towards the transport.

“That isn’t it.” He didn’t mean to raise his voice, but the words carried sharply between them. “Like I said, you don’t know me; you’re only making assumptions.”

He paused at that, and a moment passed before he turned. The scrutiny was back in his eyes. “Tell me, then, Your Majesty. Why were _you_ in the ruins? Why are you here? I don’t understand.”

Kylo gaped at him. He hadn’t—didn’t, as a rule—talked with anyone about his dreams, about the impulse he felt sometimes, the desire to swim away from the city and never come back, to the follow the voice that insisted he didn’t _belong_ here, that he was meant for something else. He couldn’t explain what had led him away from the parade, not to his satisfaction. But he could see the sneer start to resettle over Hux’s features, dismissive. It shouldn’t be important whether he swam away now or not, whether he ever let him in again, in fact, but it was. Somehow it was. 

“I was—I felt drawn to it,” Kylo stammered. “I wanted to see, and. Understand. I looked at that gadget for two weeks straight, you know. I wanted to know what it was. What it did. But I couldn’t figure it out. And no one wanted to help me understand it. But _you_ can. You might be the only one.” 

Hux twitched his fins, his face blank. Maybe considering. Maybe just coming up with his next cutting remark. Finally, he sighed. “Oh, all right,” he said. “But if you touch _anything_ , I’m sending you back to your palace minus a finger, and never mind who your pfassking mother is.”

* * *

“What’s that?” Kylo asked some cycles later. He didn’t come to see Hux every day—that would attract too much notice on the city’s outskirts and at home—but he could sneak away some mornings and afternoons, time he usually spent on his own or sparring with Rey. It had been a full, busy palace his entire childhood, but he still ended up alone most of the time. He had never known why. But now, at least, it was useful.

“It’s a motivator,” Hux explained, not kindly, although with slightly less of an implied _idiot_. He was wearing his goggles and had half-dismantled the piece in question. The tool in his hand made a high shrill sound; Millicent opened one eye and rolled over on her customary shelf, flippers waving. “Converts one type of energy to another.”

Kylo fidgeted in his corner. He had taken to perching next to the anemone; even though it could sting him, it was technically not off-limits, as the rest of the workshop was. And it was still friendlier than Hux, its fronds rippling gently at his side. “What do you want with it?”

Hux gestured to a pile of—well, it looked mostly like junk to him, although he understood now it probably wasn’t. “I want to install it in a droid and see if it’ll work.”

Kylo straightened, looking more closely at the workbench, trying to make sense of what he saw. It still seemed to be mostly plating and wires. “You’ve got a droid?” He thought of the one at the balance, in pieces and likely to remain that way. 

“Not a complete one,” Hux demurred. He prodded the heap of parts. “I don’t have a personality matrix, for starters, so it can’t think on its own. But it should have some ambulatory capabilities, if I tell it what to do via computer.”

He still hadn’t shown the computer to Kylo—was jealously protective of it. Kylo hoped Hux might change his mind soon. If he had records of the world before the rising, there were so many questions they might answer. He understood, after a fashion, _why_ he was reluctant to share it; if he had that sort of knowledge, he would guard it, too. The world before was largely something of myth, the old stories muddled from being told and retold. But if he had more context for them, he might be able to make sense of his own dreams. And all Luke hadn’t told him, about the Force and what it meant for them.

He knew it was best not to press Hux on the topic, so instead he asked, “Personality matrix?”

“What makes a droid a sentient, not just another piece of machinery. Some of them were quite advanced. Cleverer than an organic person.” His voice turned a little wistful. “I’d like to make a fully functioning one, but that’s probably not possible here.”

“If you tried, I’m sure you could,” Kylo said. Not even to flatter him—it was true. Already Hux had explained more about the machines that littered the landscape around the city than his mother’s historians and engineers ever had. He should probably bring him to the palace so he could correct their obsolete theories. 

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Hux said without looking up, although not as dryly as he might have. 

“You’re welcome,” he replied, equally deadpan, or he tried. He waited, tracing the edge of a barnacle attached to the inside wall of the transport, its smooth edge. “Can I ask you a question?”

Hux paused, turning to look at him, some of his previous suspicion back in his face. It was a fragile truce, Kylo understood, and he still didn’t know what he had said to make Hux change his mind. “What kind of question?” he asked. “Mathematical? Mechanical?”

He cleared his throat. “Personal.”

His mouth turned down at the corners briefly before he went back to his work, without responding. Kylo thought that was that until he asked, “What do you want to know?”

“Why do you live all the way out here?” There was very little, as far as he could tell, beyond the armored transport, and few sentients nearby. The city, such as it was at the edges, ended several hundred meters behind them. 

Hux scoffed quietly. “Where should I live then, Your Majesty? Not all of us were raised in palaces.”

“You could just call me Kylo,” he pointed out. “And that isn’t what I meant. Why live by the city at all if you don’t want to live in it? Why stay here?” 

He had something of the temperament of a wanderer, as Kylo understood it, and they too concerned themselves with the relics. But here he was.

“I’ve no family.” He put down his tools altogether then, to turn to look at him. For once, he didn’t seem to be annoyed, although he was still frowning, lips thinned. “One merman by himself doesn’t stand much of a chance in the open ocean,” he said slowly.

Kylo thought of Luke, whether he was still out there somewhere, contemplating the truth of their existence—or whatever it was. It was possible he had fallen to a predator or a storm or any number of other dangers, but Kylo doubted it. His mother always had, too, when he asked about Luke. _I just have a feeling he’s all right somewhere_ , she often said. Although few left the city, as a rule. The city grew or shrank as it needed, from season to season, but its people stayed in the safety of the valley. “I think it could be possible,” he said. “It would be better with more people, of course. You could see what was really out there.” 

_Keep your focus here_.

Hux went silent then, his feathery lashes lowered as he mulled this over. The lights from the machines and the algae flickered over his features, dappling them with color. It was a striking face in many respects, sharp angles and a soft mouth, when he wasn't sneering, almost delicate-looking, and his bright hair drifted over his brow when he nodded. “Maybe so,” he allowed. Then: “I prefer it out here. It’s quieter, and I can come and go as I like. And work undisturbed.” He worried his lower lip, as though he might add something, but only nodded again, mostly to himself.

* * *

The palace was dark, save for the glowing sapphirine lanterns hung along the corridors. Kylo roamed, as he often did when he couldn’t sleep, when the dreams stirred his mind too frantically, and he felt that same beckoning into the waters beyond the city. He ventured out of the halls to the gardens, greeting the night watch as he went. Many of them were younger than he was now—Poe’s recruits, rather than Shara’s. He thought he recognized Finn, Rey’s friend, in the second patrol he encountered. They didn’t look surprised to see him; it was probably common knowledge by now that the prince was often restless and wandered at night.

The kelp rippled thickly around him, ghostly in the bioluminescence, and he dragged a hand through it as he went. He wondered if Hux stayed up late into the night working on his gadgets. He could picture it. Had already seen him go hours while barely moving, not remembering to eat or look up from his tinkering. Some days had passed since he had been out to the edge of the city; there had been councils and meetings, demands on his time. He couldn’t have said, if asked, why it mattered, but it felt right to visit the transport, however truculent and unfriendly its inhabitant.

And the sealinx hadn’t bitten him yet either.

Kylo was lost in his thoughts as he rounded the corner; he startled when he caught sight of his mother in the middle of the gardens. Leia turned, her expression softening when she saw him. “Can’t sleep?” she asked in that knowing way she had.

“Could say the same to you,” he pointed out.

She smiled. “If I drift I don’t lie in bed thinking until dawn.” She was diminutive and not only in comparison to him, although when he was younger, she would simply swim up to eye-level and ruffle his hair or tweak his ear. He had never thought of her as small, however. If anything, her presence was immense, inescapable.

“What were you thinking about tonight?” he asked, falling in next to her, and the two of them swam for a ways before she answered. He was expecting some political conundrum, dissatisfied nobility, or if they needed to expand food production into the shallow trenches east of the city.

But Leia hummed. “I was trying to decide if I’ve been too hard on you. Asked too much.”

He stilled, pulse skittering, like fish a reef falling under shadow. “Did Rey—?” _Or Poe._ How much did she know?

She planted her fists on her hips. “Rey didn’t have to say anything. I’m your mother, remember? And you’ve been distant. Like when Luke—when he went—”

He raised a hand, as though he could ward off what she was saying. “Please, let’s not talk about that.” He had been in his teens then, prone to bleak moods, and the call to the wild ocean its strongest. A night hadn’t passed when he hadn’t thought of running away, leaving all this behind. He didn’t now. Mostly.

She didn’t press. The moment ended, and they continued swimming. “So, it’s different?”

“It’s different,” Kylo confirms. “I’m just. Thinking. About things. All of this.”

She chuckled. “Sounds unpleasant.”

“Well, I’m told I take after my mother, unfortunately.” He grunted when she whacked him in the arm. “I’m okay. I promise.”

“All right.” Leia acknowledged. “You do your thinking.”

They had completed a round of the garden, and, feeling her inclination to linger, he prepared to leave her there, leaning down to peck her cheek. “Goodnight, mother.”

“Goodnight,” she told him. And then after a beat: “But Kylo? Don’t think too long.”

* * *

Kylo made his way through the poorer districts of the city as he was accustomed to doing now—his poncho draped over him, hiding the markers of his rank, and his head bowed, as though he were hurrying to complete an important errand. More and more, the people there seemed to have accepted him. Not as one of their own, not at all, but that he would be there and so far hadn’t caused any trouble. And he was getting used to them, in turn, the smell of cooking food, the particular shifting quality of the buildings, even the variable pathways, never exactly the same twice.

He thought he had navigated the quickest way to Hux’s home in the armored transport, but today that path took him into something like an impromptu market or bazaar. Tents filled the small square, and inside they were piled high with various goods, from weapons—including a spear that looked rather like the ones the palace guards carried—to food to spare parts to clothing. It seemed everywhere they were doing a brisk trade, and he listened to the merchants, if they could be called that, call out their wares. _Fresh oysters, crack ‘em yourself. Brand-new harpoon heads. Whalebone! The finest baleen you’ve ever touched._

Kylo tucked a hand into his pocket, checking to make sure the artifact was still there. He had borrowed it from the palace’s collection, a promising piece of hardware, as carefully preserved as the rest. The historians called it an ionizer, but Kylo was no longer certain that they knew. He wanted to see what Hux would make of it—and if he would be impressed enough to show him more of his findings in return. He responded well to trades, perhaps unsurprisingly given his livelihood.

Kylo had almost navigated the press and cluster of the market when he heard the raised voices. _A_ raised voice, in particular, immediately recognizable. He had heard it shouting enough at him recently to know. “And _I_ said ‘kriff off!’”

He swam faster, towards the sound of the argument.

Kylo found Hux circled by four sentients, mostly merfolk, armed, although there was a large, grinning reptile beating their palm with a club, too. Hux, at the center of the gang, had drawn a long, thin blade and was brandishing it at whoever came here. He was cradling his sling with one arm; it must have been full of salvaged tech. One burly merman dove forward to snatch it from him, but Hux snarled and slashed at him with his knife, scoring a line of red across his chest. 

“No good scavenger,” the merman snarled, grabbing at his wound.

“No-name,” one of the others said. “Bastard. Weren’t you abandoned in the rocks?”

“That’s none of your business,” Hux spat. He waved his weapon at them, looking wild, his eyes bugging and showing white around his pale irises, and bared his teeth. But it was plain on his face that he knew he was outnumbered and what would happen next, what must have happened many times before. _I prefer it out here. It’s quieter._

The attackers moved to descend on him, and Kylo remembered himself and his voice. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, leave him alone.”

They all stopped to stare at him, including Hux, who mouthed, _What are you doing here, idiot?_ before he took advantage of the distraction and stabbed the nearest of his harassers in the arm.

The merman, who had a gray, sharkskin tale, bellowed and whirled on Hux, catching him hard across the cheek with his fist. Kylo barreled forward then, and there were two merfolk bearing blades there to meet him. 

He didn’t have any weapons, but that didn’t matter. He trained every day with the guard and Rey, who never pulled her punches. He was good in a fight. And there was something satisfying about this, about letting a hit land and showing his full strength. He was stronger and faster than both of them, and it was almost easy, anticipating each blow, blocking, and striking back. Falling into that rhythm. He was barely winded when he had disarmed both of them. Was now holding a long sawtooth blade in one hand and a jagged piece of glass in the other. He grinned at his opponents, who faltered backward. But his enthusiasm faded when he heard Hux cry out behind him, and he hurried to incapacitate one of his attackers, twisting the merman’s arm hard behind his back. 

The reptilian sentient had one clawed hand wrapped around Hux’s throat, holding him aloft. They paused when they saw Kylo, and then their eyes widened in recognition and then fear; they dropped Hux, who drifted to the seafloor, rubbing his neck. The rest swam away in an equal hurry while Kylo looked after them, puzzled.

“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for Hux.

He snatched his arm away, then held out a hand, as though warding him off. Or asking him to wait. “Ha,” he said finally, hoarse. “I guess that’s good for something.”

Kylo looked down, following the line of his finger where he pointed at him. In the tussle, his poncho had slipped, showing the metal of his vambraces and the heavy collar he wore around his neck, clear signs of authority, if not royalty specifically. “Kriff,” he said, moving to right the fabric.

Hux shook his head. “Don't bother. It’ll be all over the neighborhood before the end of the day. Heir apparent saves tragic nameless orphan.”

“You have a name.” 

To Kylo’s surprise, he laughed. “Tell them that. That’s all that matters, even here, who your family is. Or was.” Hux straightened his sling and slid his knife into its sheath, then began to swim. He paused and cocked his head at Kylo. “Well? Aren’t you coming?”

He hurried to follow. “Right. Yeah. Of course I am.”

“Hurry up then,” he said, not meeting his eyes. “And Kylo? Ah. Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find us in the usual places:
> 
> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Hux go scavenging.

The ruins sprawled beyond the city, the sunken husks of the ships looming out of the dark like the remains of a fallen leviathan—here the ribs, there the spine, the skull, etc., picked bare—and fish darting out of the interiors of some of the ‘craft, those tight spaces once occupied by people, fighters and pilots and whatever else. Looking down at it, Kylo had a brief vision of how they must have moved, spinning through the air, and brilliant flashes of light. _Weapons_. They had been at war, the reason for it as buried, forgotten as the ships were.

“Are you going to stay gawking there all day?” Hux asked, coming up behind him, his bag slung over his shoulder, tail twitching with his characteristic impatience. He had offered, if reluctantly, to let Kylo accompany him today. Had been somewhat gentler with him after the incident in the market. Which was to say, he insulted him only once or twice an afternoon, rather than constantly as he had done before. But even now, he looked skeptical, like he might be regretting bringing Kylo here. “Er. We don’t have to. We can go back.” 

“No,” Kylo said sharply. He tightened his grip on the bioluminescent lantern Hux had given him to carry. Even if that was all he was allowed to do, it was progress. “No, I want to see more of it. Please.”

He pursed his lips. “We’re scavenging, not sightseeing,” he reminded him. 

“I know,” he assured him. “I won’t get in the way, I promise.”

He followed Hux deeper into the ruins, passing the first cluster of ships. “The earthquake uncovered other wrecks; they’re past the southern ridge,” Hux explained. “But most people don’t like to venture that far.” His face made clear what he thought of their lack of ambition.

“So, let’s go,” Kylo said, eager. He had something of the same feeling as the day when he had first seen Hux. A sense of being close to something, on the verge of understanding something. The same sort of beckoning. 

Hux’s mouth canted, maybe in amusement. “At your command, Your Highness,” he replied, dryly. “There’s a ship I wanted to check just on the other side. I think some of the propulsion system may still be intact.”

Kylo cocked his head, curious. “They couldn’t run, could they?”

“No, they’re well past repair.” He hesitated, looking at Kylo with unnamed emotion, eyes bright. “I want to see how it works.” Zeal, that’s what it was, how Hux was only around machines, as far as Kylo could tell.

They swam past the sprawl of ships where he had first seen—and chased—Hux, and then up and over one of the low ridges that bordered the abyssal plain.

It was a kind of ship he didn’t recognize, not like the ubiquitous round craft with or those with long, narrow bodies and their split wings. The body was somewhat triangular, blunter than the others, with two long limbs extending from the back. It was half-buried in the sand, tilting up at an acute angle, and Hux swam underneath. Brought out his set of picks and chisels and set about prying open the hull. Kylo kept close, holding the lantern aloft and watching him work. He had grown accustomed to that, these past weeks: Hux’s delicate movements and careful approach, his intent focus. Now he was working open a long narrow panel, showing the mess of cabling and tubes inside. 

Or it looked like a mess to Kylo. Hux made a soft, satisfied sound and plunge his hand into the tangle, sorting through it and pulling out one strand. “See, this line feeds to the engine core,” he told Kylo, or said in his general direction. “It’s a mechanical _and_ a computerized system.”

Kylo murmured what he hoped sounded like understanding. 

Hux laughed at him. “It means that the pilot used both the controls and the computer to run the ship. They still flew by steering, but the computer did some of the work, probably complex calculations.”

Aside from Rey and his mother, no one had laughed at him in years. Kylo ignored the way his ears went hot at the sound, trying to focus on the point Hux was making. “So you’d need to be strong to be a pilot.”

He hummed. “Probably, but more than that, you’d need excellent reflexes. At least for these smaller ships. I don’t know about the larger ones.”

“Larger ones?” Kylo echoed, looking around. None of these seemed small to him—some were as big as buildings.

“Yes, ships the size of small cities. I’ve only ever seen the plans,” Hux said, wistful now. “Some people say there’s the wreck of one past the western trenches, but that’s more than two days’ swim. Too far to go alone, even to look.”

Four days there and back—his absence would certainly be noted. Kylo bit back the suggestion that they could go. Hux would only laugh at him again.

“In any case,” Hux went on. He was detaching part of the ship’s inner workings. “This is a good find.”

“For trade?” Kylo wondered aloud, squinting at the mass in Hux’s hand. It didn’t _look_ like anything anyone would want. Maybe the spare wiring to bind pieces together.

Hux made a low, disgusted noise and huffed. “No. But no one sees what’s really of value in that wretched place. They’re only interested in trinkets and appearances.” His expression eased. He picked up the panel he’d pried loose. “I can bring this back and get a few portions for it at the market. That’s what I usually do.”

 _The other day_ , Kylo almost said. Or: _Do you often go hungry?_ He thought of Hux’s little garden, the spiny vegetables and globe fruit and kelp. More self-sufficient yes, but— 

“Hold on a moment.” Hux grabbed his arm, stilling him. He peered over the edge of the craft.

“What is it?” Kylo asked.

Hux stared into the gloomy water, not answering. “I thought I saw something.” He shook his head. “But I must have been mistaken.”

Kylo moved to raise the lantern, to see better, but Hux’s grip on his armed tightened.

“Best to cover that. They can attract—well, unwanted attention.”

 _Predators,_ he didn’t say, but that was the fear. Kylo’s hand twitched for a weapon he didn’t have. He should have just taken a spear or a sword from the armory, but there would be questions, and he would be noticed. Since the incident in the marketplace, the merfolk on the edges of the city had begun to look at him with more curiosity, some even like they might recognize him. And if that happened, if word got back, all of this would end, no explaining to his mother what he was doing hanging around with a scavenger who liked to tinker with old relics instead of attending to his duties.

But there was the more immediate question: “How will we see?” The light was a risk, yes, but surely navigating the wreckages without it was still more hazardous, and they were farther from the city than Kylo had ever ventured.

“I can get us out,” Hux said, his voice pitched lower, calming. “I know the way. Just stay with me.” 

Kylo tucked the lantern under his poncho. He squinted at Hux, his pale face and sparkling tail scarcely visible in the dark water, the ships beyond them little more than looming shadows. He swallowed, unsure of their success, but then Hux’s hand slipped into his, warm and sure. “Okay,” Kylo agreed. “Let’s go.”

He hadn’t swum while holding onto someone since Rey was small and it was his responsibility to look after her, her tiny hand tucked into his larger one. He had thought he would have to go slowly, but in truth, she had dragged him all over the palace and gardens, demanding to know what everything was. This, he reflected, was nothing like that, Hux carefully guiding him through the labyrinth of wrecks. Once or twice, his fin brushed the edge of a hull or wing, and a shiver went through him. It was like swimming through a dead reef, eerily still and quiet. The water had gone strangely calm. 

Kylo tugged on Hux’s hand, making him pause. “The fish,” he whispered. “They’re not.”

“I know,” Hux said softly back. “There’s something out there.”

They went on, moving quietly, gentle flicks of their tails, Hux nearly silent. Kylo did his best—he had never had to swim like this before.

He could nearly make out the city’s glow beyond the next ridge when Hux’s hand tightened around his, and he jerked him back, hard, all but dragging him inside one of the fallen ships. Kylo couldn’t withhold a grunt of surprise, and Hux’s palm clamped down over his mouth. “Quiet,” he hissed in Kylo’s ear, lips almost brushing it.

Kylo couldn’t see it, not dark as it was, but as they stayed still in the shelter of the hull, something large—massive—swam past them. A fin or arm thudded against the outside of the ship, and the entire thing tipped sideways, hanging suspended before it crashed into the sand. Kylo tumbled forward against the front console, only saved from falling free by Hux’s arms locking around him. He clung tight to him after, so much so that Kylo could feel the tattoo of his heartbeat between his shoulders, his harsh breathing, thin chest expanding and contracting sharply, and the tremor in his muscles as he held onto him.

Everything went still, and most of all the two of them, pressed together in the shadow of the wreck.

“Okay,” Hux said at last, more to himself than Kylo. He still hadn’t let go. “We’re okay.”

“We are,” Kylo murmured. “We’re okay.”

That seemed to bring him back to himself, and he disentangled himself from Kylo. His eyes were wide and dark, his face white. “This was a bad idea,” he declared, shaking his head. “Bringing you out here.”

“I’m all right,” Kylo said. He waved both hands and his tail fin to demonstrate. “See? You don’t have to worry about me.” Although it was a strange thought that Hux _would_ , after he’d sworn up and down what a nuisance Kylo was for a month straight.

He shook his head. “If something happened to you—“ he cleared his throat. “I’d be in trouble. Can you imagine the charge? Getting the crowned prince eaten by a shark.”

Kylo frowned, pensive, and looked back over the plain. “I don’t think that was a shark.” Not like any shark he had encountered.

“No,” Hux agreed. “I don’t know what that was.”

Large predators rarely came near to the city, and the guard watched the perimeter for those that were brave or hungry enough to venture near all the lights and bustle. He would ask Poe, he resolved, to direct his people to be vigilant for something—something big.

But for now, he retrieved Hux’s bag from where it had fallen and offered it to him. 

He accepted it cautiously, then took Kylo’s hand again.

Didn’t let go until they reached the sunken city.

* * *

“What do you think happened?” Kylo asked from his usual spot by the anemone. Its fronds undulated softly in his direction, as if in answer. Likely it was responding to the sound of his voice; he had taken to greeting it when he came into the armored transport. Sometimes he talked to it instead of Hux, if Hux was in one of his moods. He wasn’t quite in one today, although it was a near thing: he only grunted at Kylo’s question. “In the battlefield, I mean. Or I think it’s a battlefield. All those ships.”

“It must have been,” Hux agreed without looking up. “I doubt they were there for a party.”

“But what were they fighting over?”

“What does anyone fight over?” Hux shrugged, inexpressive. He mumbled a curse at whatever bit of salvage he had taken apart today. He hadn’t been inclined to explain when Kylo arrived, and he knew better than to push him when he was like this. “Territory, resources, power.” He gestured vaguely. “Just everyone fighting for what someone else has or to keep what they’ve already got.”

“I wonder who won.”

“I tend to think none of them did. Or maybe they did, and something worse happened after. Look what happened to us. Bloody cataclysm and forgotten by the rest of the galaxy.” He hissed, dropping the widget in his hand, shaking his fingers.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Kylo approached, concerned. “Let me see.”

He sucked on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. Examined the wound, the skin red and irritated. “It isn’t bad. I’ll put some algae on it.”

Kylo made a disapproving noise, knowing he sounded entirely like his mother. “You should take a break. You’ve been at this all day.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Hux rolled his eyes, although his tone wasn’t as caustic as those first few visits. _Your Highness_ had less the tone of _annoying piece of_ _grit stuck under my fins_ , at least. “Could probably have some food.”

Kylo brightened. “That reminds me. I, uh. Brought you something.” He had gone to the kitchens a few cycles prior and asked for a basket. No one had questioned the request, but then, they had no reason to. Only Rey and Poe looked in askance when he did something—anything—lately. If his mother had opinions about his comings and goings, she didn’t share them, although he had noticed her watching him more than once recently, the expression on her face unreadable. Leia wasn’t the type to reveal her thoughts easily; he suspected he wouldn’t know her position until she was ready to share it. 

He was grateful for that; it meant he had his freedom, for the time being.

Hux raised his eyebrows, clearly skeptical. “We can eat outside,” he allowed.

Millicent followed them up out of the top hatch, swimming lazily in Hux’s wake. She settled down next to him when he perched on the edge of the transport, resting her soft chin on his gleaming tail, her oil-drop eyes fixed on his hands. Hux had a small bundle, wrapped in seaweed, from the market. Inside were several flash-fried squidlets. He popped one in his mouth, then offered the next to Millie, who also ate hers whole, rumbling.

Kylo sat near them, cradling his small woven basket. Inside they had packed an assortment of party treats, the sort they only served on special occasions. The cook, a diminutive, orange sentient with enormous eyes and a sleek, flippered tail, had given him something of a knowing look when he made the request—and again when she handed it to him this morning. 

Hux and Millie watched him with the same heavy-lidded disinterest when he opened it now, although Millie’s whiskers twitched forward at the prospect of fish.

Hux, meanwhile, wrinkled his nose. “What is that?” he asked, skeptical.

Kylo held up a pink and green bundle, artfully skewered. “It’s scalefish, with salt rice, wrapped in kelp.”

“It looks off,” Hux said. “You’re a prince. They should give you better food.”

“No, it’s good,” he insisted. Ate a piece to demonstrate, then held another out to Hux. “Here, try it.”

He pushed at his arm, although not hard enough to move it, flapping his hands in the direction of the food. “No, I don’t want that,” he protested.

“Come on, just try it,” Kylo said, moving it closer.

Hux pressed his lips together, locking them against the intrusion of any dubious cuisine. “Mm-mm.”

Kylo wrapped his free arm around him, holding him still. “Don’t be such a baby, Hux.”

“No, it’s gross!” he yelped, tail flaring, and pushed at him with both hands. 

Millie, displaced by the scuffle, gave them both what could only be described as a withering look before she ate the scalefish whole out of Kylo’s hands. 

“Millie!” Hux scolded. “Get that out of your mouth.”

The sealinx chewed on the wrapped fish, unperturbed and un-chastised, and swallowed. Belched.

“I told you it was good,” Kylo said.

“She eats raw clams; her taste is obviously questionable,” Hux huffed. He reached for the squidlets again. “Fancy palace cooks, of course they ruin perfectly good fish.” 

Kylo snorted in a flurry of bubbles. “Right, of course, what you eat is so much better.” He had seen enough of his absent-minded meals at his workbench to know Hux paid little attention to what he ate.

“It is,” Hux said, assured. “Immeasurably. See?” And before Kylo could protest or do anything, he reached over and shoved a piece of squid in his open mouth.

He made a choked sound, not expecting the retaliatory attack. With Hux’s hand over his mouth, there was nothing for him to do but chew. The squid was a little greasy, a little tough, but the flavor wasn’t bad, he decided. 

Not that he was going to tell Hux that.

Still, he smirked at Kylo like he had won something when he swallowed it.

“This is better for you,” Kylo told him, taking up the basket again. 

Hux shrugged, unbothered.

They sat in silence after that, eating their respective meals, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Was, in fact, more at ease than Kylo had felt in some time. There was no scrutiny here—for all that Hux was constantly critical, he didn’t seem to expect anything of him, for him to have answers or make decisions. And Millicent was bribable, he’d found. He surreptitiously fed her another piece of scalefish, and she accepted his scratches behind her flippers.

“I found her when she was only a pup,” Hux offered. “She was separated from her colony during the stormy season. I kept giving her scraps, and eventually she stayed.”

He was smiling, really smiling, and the expression softened his whole face, usually so severe. His eyes were as green as the morning water like this. Kylo gulped hard against a larger piece of kelp, sticking in his throat.

“Sealinxes don’t usually like merfolk; they’re suspicious of us. And rightly so, since some people hunt them. But she trusted me.” Hux reached over to stroke her ginger fur. “Sometimes, you just have to be patient, that’s all.”

That companionable quiet fell over them again after that. Kylo looked out into the water beyond, musing. And so almost missed it: Hux’s hand sneaking into the basket and snagging one of the remaining kelp-wraps.

He covered his own smile with one hand. “I guess so.”

* * *

Kylo returned to the palace late. 

He hadn’t meant to stay with Hux for so long, only he had made a breakthrough on reassembling part of the droid, and Kylo stayed to see him test it, watched the domed metal figure—less than two hands high—totter across Hux’s workbench on its clumsy, boxy feet. It had been too exciting to leave, Hux programming simple commands and the droid responding. Taciturn as he could be, his enthusiasm was infectious, and there was the way his eyes shone when he was pleased with something. It was nearly like he had smiled _at_ _Kylo_.

He had had to excuse himself well into the evening, startled when the algae shifted. He wasn’t afraid of swimming at night or alone, but his absence would have been noticed at dinner, and that might mean questions.

He wasn’t ready for questions yet.

He hadn't gone far when it hit him. It wasn’t like the visions he had had before, flashes of the city transformed, perhaps as it had been, bright and whole and undiminished, brief fancies, insubstantial. It wasn’t as quick or as clear as that. More that the water went murky around him, the street and the night-blooming phytoplankton fading away, a film over everything, and Kylo scrubbed at his face, trying to clear his eyes. Only there was nothing there, clinging to his skin. The gloom remained. He heard the sound of voices, as though from far off, one higher, the other gravelly, lower. And then there was Luke.

Luke, as he remembered him, his pale eyes and the serious, although not unfriendly, slant of his mouth. And Kylo—although not Kylo, not then—followed him around the palace, asking questions, wanting to know everything Luke could tell him about the histories and the Force, especially, always the Force. _Slow down, kid_ reverberated through the water. Kylo could see them clearly, when he was eleven or twelve, not yet grown into the length of his tail, big ears sticking out from his hair. _But what_ is _it_ , he was asking yet again.

 _It’s everything_ , Luke explained. _The whole universe and everything in it, all of it connected_.

_Can you see it?_

_Not exactly_.

_Touch it?_

He laughed. _In a way._

The scene rippled, not exactly a memory, or maybe only a dream he had had, of Luke leaving the palace in the night, cloaked much as he was now. A small, distant figure shrinking to a speck until he was out of sight as Kylo watched from his window.

And then: his uncle, older now, alone, his beard shot through with gray. Looking at—or past him, his lips moving but there was no sound.

“Luke?” Kylo asked, voice raw and hushed, and he thought. He could have sworn he looked up and their eyes met and—

The scene dissolved, leaving only the city around him: quiet, ancient, veiled in blue.

* * *

He couldn’t have said why he swam back to Hux’s transport rather than home. He wasn’t even conscious of having made a choice. Only he started swimming and kept swimming, and then the walker was in view, standing like a sentry in the gloomy water beyond the city. 

If it hadn’t been there, he might have continued and not stopped.

Instead, he banged on the hatch, disliking the trembling quality of his own voice when he asked, “Hux? Are you there?”

It opened promptly, and Hux’s bright hair emerged. His goggles were pushed up on his forehead. “Did you forget—“ He stopped, maybe seeing something in his face. ”Kylo? Are you all right? What’s the matter?””

“I’m.” And he didn’t know what he meant to say. “I don’t know.”

His brow puckered. “Come inside.”

Hux took him not into his workshop but in the smaller space beyond it where there was a woven hammock strung from the ceiling, a chest, a row of shining, etched stones lining the floor. “Here,” he said, encouraging Kylo to rest in the hammock. “What happened?” 

He started to explain, haltingly, that he didn’t know what had happened, what was happening, or what it meant. But he kept stopping to explain, to elaborate, and it was like untangling snarled net—suddenly he was telling the whole story from the beginning, how when he was small, he had had an Uncle who told him countless stories about the way the world had been and a mystical power, a living energy, and then one day he was gone without a word. How no one talked about that, or his grandfather. How he didn’t know what he was doing, if he was fit for whatever this was, and that everyone knew he’d never be quite enough like her. How some nights the ocean called him out into the fathoms, a voice beckoning him to better understand his destiny, who he was. How sometimes he wanted to heed it. 

And Hux, to his surprise, simply listened. Murmured, encouraging, when Kylo stumbled. Eventually, Millie came and settled between them, and let Kylo stroke her fur. The panic he had felt rising, frothy, uncontainable, in his chest began to subside.

“Thank you,” he said to Hux when he had finished.

Hux smiled, not his content smile that he had for working machines or for Millicent, but something more tentative than that. Maybe meant to be reassuring. Maybe— He patted Kylo’s arm. “It’s not so strange to have doubts, you know,” he said. “I imagine most people do, some of the time.”

“Not you,” Kylo accused.

Hux stuck his nose in the air, an exaggeration of his usual haughtiness. “Of course not. I know exactly what I’m meant to do.” His mouth tilted, not quite a smirk. “You can stay here tonight, if you like. I’ve slept in the workshop often enough.”

“I don’t mean to—“ Kylo paused when Hux waved off his protests. “Thank you,” he repeated.

“You’re welcome, Your Grace.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find us in the usual places:
> 
> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Kylo go stargazing.

Kylo dreamed of rising floodwaters, of cresting waves taller than cliffs, than mountains, of buildings toppling into the sea, and the sound of screams, The rumble of thunder above. Or maybe of ships trying to escape into the sky. He didn’t see if they made it. Only watched the water eat the land until there was almost nothing left. The people were crowded on the shore, tattered, dirty, and hungry. A hand extended from the sea, beckoning. One person stepped forward: a young woman. She took the offered hand, let it guide her into the water, farther and farther, until she vanished beneath the foam.

He woke alone in his room, jerking awake, although his breathing stayed easy, his limbs heavy. He waved his tail fins, just be sure. Yes, he was awake—this was his room, the palace where he had grown up. Outside, the city glowed in the lantern light, the nightbloom brightened to day. The guard was changing out by the gates, Poe overseeing the first watch as they took their posts, the gleam of his armor visible even from up here. Life, as it had proceeded in the city for centuries now, untroubled by questions of the past. 

Kylo scrubbed his eyes, shook off his lingering unease from the dream. It hadn’t been like the others, the calls out into deep water. Had almost felt like something that had happened. A memory, if not his.

His morning routine proceeded as usual: he had breakfast out on his balcony, attended a council meeting with his mother, listened to the ministers drone about the summer jellyfish drift, which would bring the bswarm close to their border if the currents continued as they had. The drift, which had only occurred three times in his memory, always posed something of a hazard to the city, although the strays were often harvested, the stingers used in weapons, the bodies used for fishing. Kylo propped his chin and his hand and listened. What would Hux suggest as a solution, he wondered.

He had invited him here, the last time they spoke, to come to the palace and see more of the royal collection. Hux had been interested enough by the description of the tech and its level of preservation, but he balked at the suggestion he come anywhere near the palace. “That’s not a good place for me,” he told Kylo, jaw tight, expression shuttered, and changed the subject.

“Prince Kylo, did you have something you wished to say?” Antilles, one of his mother’s closest advisors, interrupted. Both his thoughts and the proceedings. He was about her age, a few years old, now gray at the temples. He’d supported her bid to rule, years ago, when division threatened the city.

Kylo shook his head, fidgeting with his vambrace. “No—only I was thinking if we might disrupt the current. Or emit a signal, perhaps, to disrupt the bloom. Perhaps it would take less time and effort.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” another minister demanded.

“I don’t know.” He cleared his throat. “But it seems like the sort of thing we might be able to build if we salvaged more of the old technology. If we tried.”

A buzzing murmur went up around the room, mainly objections. This was how it had always been done, and it _worked,_ and why try anything different. Leia was watching him when he looked up. She had yet to interrupt the ruckus—often let people speak their minds until she felt inclined to move on. He didn’t recognize the expression on her face, whether she approved or not. 

She did nod when he met her eyes.

* * *

“They didn’t even want to think about doing something differently,” Kylo complained to Hux. They were nearer the city today, sifting through one of the junk piles. Hux explained that other scavengers sometimes discarded useful pieces, springs and cogs, because they weren’t considered as valuable. He dropped another connector into his bag as Kylo talked, grunting periodically in response. “Hux, are you even listening?”

“Hm?” Hux looked up, gaze focusing on Kylo finally. “Yes, yes, that sounds frustrating.”

He glared. “ _Hux_.”

He squinted at a piece of rubbish, chewed on it, and finding it lacking, tossed it back into the pile. Seeing Kylo’s annoyance, he threw up his hands in mock surrender, displacing his bag on his hip. “What do you want me to say? You’re in charge, Kylo. Or you’re going to be. You don’t need to ask anyone’s _permission_ to try things. Do you?”

Kylo considered this. His mother often disagreed with her advisors and didn’t always try to find a consensus before she made a decision. But she had years of peaceful leadership behind her; they were less wont to argue with her in the first place. Then, he had never especially tried to go against their recommendations, especially when the opposition was so immediate, so certain. He coughed and crossed his arms, unwilling to concede that Hux might have a point. “So I should just what? Implement a theory and hope it works?”

He had swum over to a taller mountain of discarded parts. It was all in bad shape; no one in the sunken city threw away anything of value. Everything was reused and repaired to the point of decrepitude. He tugged on a piece of dented scrap metal, what may have been a shield or piece of armor once, tail kicking furiously as he pulled on it. Hux made a disgruntled noise and looked over, pointedly at Kylo, who took the hint and swam over to help. “No, of course not,” he said. “That would be foolish. What you should do is make a plan, test it, test it again, review your results and then—“

The piece of durasteel finally came free in their hands, sending the two of them spiraling backward while the junk pile partially collapsed in front of them, throwing up clouds of silt and sand, smaller bits of debris skittering to the bottom after the whole mass had shifted downward. They studied the mess without speaking; Hux handed Kylo the large piece of scrap to carry and proceeded to swim away as though nothing had happened.

“You could help me,” Kylo said, following him once he had retrieved the lantern, keeping it close to his poncho. There had been no sign of whatever predator had crossed the ruins that day, not according to Poe’s people or during any of the scavenging they’d done. Hux hadn’t spoken of the incident, but Kylo had the sense that he was keeping them close to the city on purpose; they hadn’t ventured so far out since. 

Now, his expression twisted, frustration and annoyance and something else, what may be regret. “Kylo, I’ve said—“

“You don’t need to come to the palace to help me think through a problem,” he pointed out. _Although it would be easier. Although I don’t know why you won’t._ The emphasis on lineage and family names had never made sense to him. They were all descended from the same clans of survivors; the names couldn’t possibly matter anymore. “You could help me figure out a plan and build the tech if we need it.” And then, when Leia asked where the technology had come from, he could introduce Hux, get him a proper position, and make sure his talents were appreciated. And that he was safe.

Not that he worried about him, exactly, living out here by himself. He had had dreams, it was true, about swimming to where Hux’s house stood, only to find it missing, as though the transport had remembered how to walk and ambled away in the night. Or another time, when he dreamed he had found it ransacked, empty, neither Hux nor Millicent anywhere to be found. He didn’t think it would happen, but if Hux were safe, if he lived where Kylo could protect him, well, then it wouldn’t matter. He could guarantee it wouldn’t happen.

“I suppose that’s true,” Hux acknowledged eventually, however reluctantly. “Although I haven’t done much inventing. Not really.”

This was only partly accurate, Kylo knew; he had seen Hux’s drawings and calculations, the machines he had dreamed up, even though Hux said most of them were impossible with the available resources. There were some designs he wouldn’t even let him look at—it was strangely personal to him. “I’m sure you could figure it out,” Kylo said. Meaning it.

Hux snorted, as he always did when Kylo expressed any confidence in him. Not that he especially _lacked_ any. Was a peculiar amalgam of arrogance and what he called _realistic expectations_ , although Kylo considered it pure pessimism. 

“Tell me about your dream again,” Hux said instead of continuing the conversation.

Kylo hesitated. He hadn’t spoken about his dreams with anyone since Uncle Luke left, and had only recently begun describing them in detail to Hux. He hadn’t laughed at them, at least, and listened to them seriously, sometimes asking questions, sometimes only letting Kylo talk. He struggled to describe last night’s images again, fumbling through the scenes, what he remembered; they tended to fade with time, leaving vague sense impressions, the feeling of water falling on his face, an utterly alien sensation, and the sound of screaming, weeping, and lastly the murmur of the waves, the sea chewing away at the shore, the people standing on the sand, exhausted and desperate. “But there was someone else there. Someone to lead them into the ocean,” he finished again. “I don’t know what it means.”

Hux grunted, not his inattentive dismissals of before, but more thoughtful; Kylo was improving at deciphering them and the accompanying moods. “Maybe it was only a dream,” he mused.

“Maybe.”

* * *

Later, they sat together on the top of the armored transport, a habit between them now, Kylo grown accustomed to the rhythm and patterns of Hux’s days—such as they were, almost as invariable as his own in some respects—in the past two months. He had continued sneaking food out of the palace, different types each time, and always more than he would need for his own meal. The head cook never blinked at any of his requests, although she did smile in that knowing way she had when she saw him coming. _What’s the treat today, my Prince?_ The day he had learned Hux favored sweets was worth all of his other refusals, including the times he had literally thrown the offerings back at him. 

If Hux knew what he was doing, he didn’t let on. Millicent, by contrast, had started nosing around his things when he arrived, trying to find the day’s packed meals.

Today he set the small basket of jellied coral fruit between them, trying not to look too pleased when Hux dipped a hand back in for seconds and then thirds. He leaned back on his elbows, looking up into the inky water. Behind them the night algae were glowing a soft blue, the whole city lit up with it, the valley where it sprawled brimming with gentle incandescence. But in the other direction, it was dark, unknowable water, full of threat and promise. “Do you ever think about what would happen if you just went?” he asked Hux, wondering. “What you would find out there?”

It was quiet for a moment, only the sound of the current and Millie chewing happily on her portion of the meal.

“All the time,” Hux said finally, voice softer than usual, how it had been only a few times since Kylo met him. “Not only out there. Anywhere. There’s a whole galaxy we’ll never get to see.”

Kylo smiled at him, not laughing; he’d grown used to this sort of talk. “What, see the stars up close?”

“The stars, other worlds, different people. Who knows what might be waiting, if we could only reach it.” He swished his tail, his speckled scales glittering; his eyes were bright even in the dark. His voice turned wistful. “We had that once.”

He let his hand drift down between them, taking Hux’s in his. They hadn’t since the day out in the ruins, but Hux didn’t pull away. May even have answered Kylo’s squeeze. 

“I haven’t seen the stars in years, you know,” Kylo told him. “Not since I was little.” Luke had taken him a few times—until a stern word from Leia put a stop to it. According to Poe, it was normal for young merfolk to swim up to the surface at night, daring each other farther up through the dark until they broke the surface. He and Rey had never been party to those sorts of traditions, sequestered in the place. He wondered if she had gone by now, though, with Finn and the others.

He looked down at the glittering of Hux’s tail. Felt the urge to touch it, not for the first time.

But Hux had startled, his grip tightening around Kylo’s fingers. “You haven’t seen the kriffing _stars_ since you were a child?” he echoed. “That’s—that’s ridiculous, Kylo. Come on.” He swam upward, faster than Kylo could come up with, dragging him along as he did. Finally, Kylo kicked after him, bemused.

“You want to go _now_?” 

“Yes, now,” Hux replied. “Why not?”

 _It’s late. I should be getting back. It could be dangerous._ None of the objections that come to mind left Kylo’s mouth. Instead, he hurried to keep up with Hux.

It wasn’t a quick swim to the surface, although no longer than swimming from the ruins to the city. He remembered how endless it had felt when he was a child, as though the ocean was all there was and they would never break through the water, that it was all some elaborate lesson on his uncle’s part, and eventually they would turn around and head home. _There’s nothing but this_. But Luke kept encouraging: _just a little farther, you can do it, Ben, you’ll see_. The water had begun to lighten, silvery and strange, and he had blinked at the difference, eyes slowly adjusting. _What is that_ , he wanted to know. _That’s moonlight. Our planet has two moons_.

It was not as bright now, the gleam coming through the water paler, weaker, than that he remembered. Everything was placid, still, and it was almost a shock when his head and shoulders broke the surface, and the air hitting his face made him reel slightly. Hux steadied him, hand still around his, as he struggled to get his bearings.

Of course, it was difficult to see _anything_ to orient himself with the tangle of his hair clinging to his face. He combed at it uselessly with his fingers, trying to clear his eyes. 

Hux let out one short, barking laugh when he saw what the problem was, then more laughter, a rattling cackle that went on far too long in Kylo’s opinion. His voice sounded sharper, harsher in the open air than it did underwater. Everything sounded different, in fact, even the sea itself, the water churning around them as they moved, the sound of the breeze over the surface, everything more abrupt, less resonant. Including his own small noise of protest. “It isn’t funny,” he said, unnerved by the tonality of his own voice.

Hux was still snickering when he said, “All right, all right. Here, let me help you, my poor prince. Lie back.”

Kylo let him guide him back down into the water, gently easing his face under the surface. He wasn’t sure if it was Hux’s hands on him or the words _my prince_ that sent a minute shiver through him, although there was no reason for either to affect him. Once submerged, he shook his hair out of his eyes. Allowed Hux to brush it back behind his ears for him when they reemerged. 

“Better?” he asked, one arm still around him.

“I think so,” Kylo agreed, tugging a few straggling pieces in front of his ears.

“Terribly vain,” Hux chastised, although it didn’t quite sound like a criticism. “Quit your fussing and look up.”

Kylo did, his hand falling free from his hair. His mouth might have slipped open, too; he didn’t know, all of his attention focused on the sparkling expanse above him, the glimmer of different stars and systems, more than he could ever count. More than he could have ever imagined. He remembered the stars from before, remembered the moonlight more than anything, but it’s dimmer tonight, one of the two moons in shadow, the other an opalescent sliver. And in their near-absence: this multitude of lights.

Hux squeezed his shoulder. “What do you think?”

“It’s incredible.”

“It is,” he agreed. Hand sliding down to take his again. “I know somewhere we can better study them. This way."

He followed Hux through the water, dazed, unable to keep from staring upward. If he had been leading him into a shark’s mouth, Kylo didn’t think he would notice. But he didn’t, only brought him to an archipelago of small, rocky islands jutting from the mirror-like water. “Why is it so calm?” Kylo thought to ask.

“The time of year, I think,” Hux said. He dragged himself up onto a rock, extending a hand down to Kylo as he followed. “It’s not so unlike our currents below, but it follows its own patterns. The moons, too, follow a cycle, light to dark and back again.”

Kylo shuffled up onto the rocks, settling next to Hux. It wasn’t the most comfortable place he’d stretched out, but it made it much easier to look up and admire the sprawl of lights above them. He studied the riot of bright pinpoints, trying to find patterns or make sense of them, to decipher which ones stood out more starkly, which might be different colors, but a broad sense of it evaded him. There had been an astronomer in the court when he was younger, a small, elderly sentient who always answered his questions in riddles, but no one had taken up the post after, and few people considered that skill important. 

“What’s that?” he asked Hux, pointing at a streak arcing across the sky.

“I think it’s a comet,” Hux said. “A lump of rock and ice moving through the universe.”

“Why?”

“Why any of it?” he asked. Not spitting it at him, irate, for once. Musing. “Everything obeys its own laws of motion and gravity. Same as we do. The sea and everything in it.”

Kylo could only hum in response, struck by the thought. “Everything connected,” he said finally. Thinking again of his vision—his memory?—of Luke, and the scattered, fallen ships in the battlefield. The city. The gardens. “Life and motion and death and stagnation.”

He could feel it when Hux turned to look at him, appraising. “I imagine so.”

For a long while, they simply lay there, side-by-side, pointing out that configuration or anomaly. _That resembles Millie a bit, don’t you think? That looks like a sword to me. A reef. Like the palace. Like a ship._

“How did you know about this place?” Kylo wondered aloud. He didn’t know how late it was, the calling of the hours and shifting algae blooms faraway, and found he didn’t much care. If he were missed, if he would be missed. He tilted his head to study Hux, surprised by the expression on his face, what may have been shyness. Reticence.

“My mother was a wanderer,” Hux said. “She left me here when I was small. Six or seven. Some foragers found me and brought me to the city. I haven’t seen her since. I don’t know what happened to her.”

 _Abandoned,_ the sentients in the marketplace had said.

“Hux—“ Kylo started to say, his voice catching, and reached out with one hand. “Anything could have happened to her.”

He shrugged away from the touch. “It’s all right,” he said. “Everyone says she left me, but I know she didn’t. If she could have come back, I know she would have. She took me away from my father to save me; she wouldn’t have just left me.” Assertive, yes, but not like the usual Hux, always so sure of himself.

 _What about your father_. Kylo swallowed, not wanting to ask now. Some things were better left undisturbed. “Was she a scav—did she like to fix things, too?”

“I don’t really remember,” he confessed. “She did show me how to get into ships. And she took me up to see the stars often.”

“They’re like your tail,” Kylo offered, smiling. “She wanted to make sure you knew why that was special.”

He smiled back, shyly, eyes shining in the light. “She wanted me to see more of the world. That’s what wanderers do.” His expression faltered. “I should be less of a coward and venture farther.”

“We could go together,” he blurted. A thought he’d had before, often even. The two of them made a good team, he knew that. “We could go find that ship. The city-ship.”

Hux scoffed, sounding entirely like himself again. “Of course, we can, your Majesty. You can just disappear for a week, and no one will notice or care. And that’s _if_ we can find it, if it hasn’t tipped into a trench or we aren’t eaten by sharks—“

“Hux,” Kylo interrupted. “I mean it. We can do it. We will.” He swallowed, looking up at the heavens again. “At least. If you want to. We should.”

He could feel Hux’s scrutiny before he met his gaze, willing him to believe it, trying to show his sincerity. “You’re serious,” he said.

“I am. What do you say?”

Kylo couldn’t track the emotions that crossed his face: surprise and amusement and disbelief and what might be something like affection. Although he didn’t. Couldn’t hope for that. At last, he shook his head, smiling again. “I suppose, I say yes.”

* * *

Kylo woke late, the morning after, thinking of what Hux had said, and what he promised him. His head felt strangely clear despite that, maybe clearer than it had in months. They would take a few days, they had decided, to gather supplies. He didn’t know how he would account for his absence, what excuse he could make to his mother. What if he just went? But then they would know something had changed, that _he_ had changed. There might be a search. Unrest, if word got out. Nonetheless, he was determined to go.

He went to spar with Rey early in the afternoon, still undecided about his plans. Partway through their bought, she threw down her spear in exasperation. “If you didn’t want to train, you could have just said,” she complained.

“What?” Kylo asked. 

“You’re leagues away, Kylo. I could have disarmed you six times, and I don’t think you would have even noticed!”

He held up his weapon, sure of his grip on it. “Of course, I would have _noticed_. And you didn’t, so _._ ” 

Rey folded her arms. “You’re not even here half the time anymore,” she said, more softly. “And when you are—“

Kylo nudged her with the blunted end of the spear. “What’s the matter, fry? Miss me?”

“Never.” She bared her teeth.

He grinned at her. “I think you do. You miss having me around to annoy.”

“I certainly do _not_ ,” Rey cried, attacking him barehanded now.

Kylo dropped his spear, and they grappled in the sand, kicking up billowing clouds of it with thrashing tails and flailing arms. Rey wasn’t especially trying to hurt him, although she did catch the side of his head with her elbow. “Kriff, Rey,” he protested when the tussle ended with him in a headlock, his sister holding him immobile.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing,” she demanded. “And why do you keep disappearing?”

Kylo struggled against her grip. For all that she was much smaller than he was, it was almost impossible to break her hold. “That’s none of your business.”

“Not my business?” Rey’s arms went lax, and he slipped out of her arms. “You’re my family. Of course, it’s my business. And you’re the crowned prince. That makes everything you do _everyone’s_ business.”

“That’s the problem,” he said, blurting it. 

The two of them stopped, staring at each other, motionless, until Rey sighed.

She punched him in the arm. “You _are_ having doubts.”

He exhaled, letting his shoulders droop. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

She shook her head, an unspoken, _of course I won’t._ “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I need some time to figure it out. I might—go away for a few days. Could you cover for me, Rey? Please?”

She frowned at him, and he could almost hear the flurry of questions. _Where are you going? What are you going to do? What am I supposed to tell Leia?_ Finally, she nodded. “All right, Kylo. I’ll say…you’re sick? And don’t want anyone to come near you. Because you’re overdramatic. That they’ll believe.”

Ignoring the insult, he smiled, relief washing through him, and dragged her close in a quick hug. She squawked in protest. “Thank you, Rey.” He pulled back to look her in the eye. “ _Thank you_.”

“Yeah, well, you owe me one,” she grumbled. She poked him hard in the arm. “And you had better come back, understand?”

“I will. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Hux journey away from the city.

Kylo left the palace before the guards changed in the morning, before the light had begun to change. It was quiet, no one about yet; even Leia must have retired by then. He wore his vambraces and his poncho, as he would on any visit to Hux. But he also retrieved his sword from the armor, not a ceremonial weapon or a blunted practice piece, but a sharpened blade, heavy in his hand, and between his shoulders when he strapped it to his back. Just in case. He considered a spear as well, thinking of the presence in the ruins, but they needed to travel light.

He was in the larder, foraging for provisions when the sudden illumination of a lantern startled him. The small sentient who ran the kitchens smiled at him from the doorway. Without speaking, she retrieved a satchel from behind the oven. “This should last the week.” She held it out to him. Side-bye-side, she didn’t come up to his chest, but she swam at eye-level, unbothered, seemingly, by her shorter stature or his size. 

Kylo accepted the bag after a moment’s hesitation. “Thank you.”

“Travel well, young prince,” was all she said.

The city was scarcely livelier than the palace, the first sentients making their way into the streets, opening shopfronts and stalls, departing to harvest and fish, taking the little ones to the pillared arena where they held the daily lessons. He had been jealous of them as a child; Luke had seen to his teaching himself, imparting the same the things all the children learned, he swore to him. It had been much more than that, he now knew. Although he still would have liked being around more people his own age. Interrogated Poe about it endlessly when he returned to the palace at day’s end.

He received murmured good mornings as he swam and responded with a polite nod each time. Even nearer Hux’s home in the border reefs, he received a few murmured hello’s and good days.

Hux was already outside when Kylo reached the transport—he was circling his garden, harvesting kelp, Millie trailing in his wake and munching the krill he plucked off the long stalks and tossed over his shoulder. He looked up, startled, at Kylo’s approach. “I didn’t think you’d really come,” he told him, blunt as ever, but his expression was mild.

Kylo folded his arms over his chest. “Is that your way of saying you’re backing out?”

His pale eyes narrowed. “No. I have my pack ready.”

He watched Hux secure the transport; the workbench was the neatest he’d yet seen it, everything he was leaving carefully tucked away. When he was finished, he explained to Millicent—at length—that he would be back and she was not to wander far; there were plenty of small fish around for her to eat. He scratched behind her fins, regarding her with genuine emotion and what may have been tears in his eyes.

Seeing Kylo, he cleared his throat. “Well, no use in floating around all day. Let’s go.”

* * *

Hux had an old map, marked on flimsi, traded from a wanderer; he cautioned Kylo that it may not be accurate five times before Kylo swore that he wouldn’t hold him accountable if everything on it wasn’t precisely as marked. They swam around the edge of the ruins, heading north and west into the expanse of blue. It was surprisingly comfortable traveling with Hux after all these weeks, perhaps more so than it would have been even with Poe or Rey. They moved in an easy quiet, speaking occasionally. It was, in a way, not dissimilar from all those afternoons he had spent in Hux’s workshop.

Eventually, they came to a high ridge in the abyssal plain. When Kylo turned, he could still make out the hazy lights of the city behind them. But once they swam past the barrier, it would be out of sight.

“We can go back,” Hux offered. “Now or—at any time.”

“We’ll come back after we find the ship,” Kylo replied, trying for certainty, confidence, authority.

Based on Hux’s expression, he may not have exactly succeeded.

On the other side of the ridge, they were confronted with the open ocean. Which was not to say _empty_ , of course, but rather a sprawling landscape of reefs and trenches and spiraling schools of fish. Here and there stood the remains of crumbling buildings, the dregs of the world before. A small bloom of jellyfish floated well south of them, like a cloud of soft bodies and long, dragging tentacles, the cluster of them a brilliant orange against the water. As they watched, a few sealinxes swam around the edge of the drift, picking off stragglers, neatly evading their stingers and chomping down on their glutinous insides. The distant sound of whale song echoed from leagues away.

It felt expansive. Endless.

He and Hux swam well above the seafloor for much of the day, only stopping on a reef or outcropping to rest or eat. It was easier to see the landscape from up here, to try to correlate it with the symbols on Hux’s map. Once, they darted down, closer to the reefs, avoiding a frenzy of hammerheads above, and stayed still until they passed. Otherwise they traveled undisturbed.

They had left the city well behind when the sea flickered around Kylo, and he stuttered to a stop, blinking at the ground below, rolling green grass and a heard of round, ponderous animals running down a hillside, the air cool and brisk in his lungs. He took another breath, and the scene faded, as they always did, replaced with water, Hux’s face, not quite concerned. He had stopped.

“What happens when you do that?” he asked. “You seem to—go away a bit.”

“There’s mostly glimpses,” Kylo explained. “Of how things were. I don’t know why it happens when it does.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, unsure how much he should say. But Hux knew about his dreams, about his uncle, what no one else did. Little point in withholding this, now. “Sometimes I think. I think it may be the Force.”

“The Force?” Hux echoed. “But that’s only a story people tell, isn’t it? Part of the myth of the rising, that this was all for some greater purpose, etc.?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. Thought of Luke, his search for greater understanding, the philosophy. What he had tried to teach him, those lessons incomplete. “But even stories are based on some truth, aren’t they? The rising happened, after all.”

Hux didn’t comment further, only hummed, thoughtful. “How are you feeling?” he asked instead. “Tired?”

“Just because I’m a prince doesn’t mean I can’t swim for long distances,” he protested.

His smile was sharp as a shark’s. “I don’t know. I’ve heard something about snail chariots. Sounds apt, given your swimming.”

Kylo bumped him with one elbow, nudging him off course. “Those are for _parades_.”

“Pardon, your Highness, I don’t have much experience with parades. Being a poor, ignorant scavenger.” Hux nudged him back. “Tell me, are they good for eating?”

“Very funny.” 

“It was, wasn’t it.” Hux shook his bright hair, it drifted lazily around his ears, freer without the near-omnipresent goggles. “But we should find a place to rest for the nightbloom.”

Kylo murmured his agreement. “I think there are some buildings down there.” He pointed. “Probably a safer option than a cave. Or as safe as anything is out here.”

They passed a pod of snub-nosed porpoises as they descended, and startled a large octopodan, which jetted away in a stream of clouding ink. Near the seafloor, two cuddlefish grappled over the remains of a large mollusk, its twin shells pulled in half, the tender interior exposed, and a small vornkrshark worried at the carcass of what may have been a slug, shaking it in its teeth. The sight of them eased Kylo’s mind, as much of their journey had thus far; he had worried they would find a wasteland behind the valley, but it was rich, thriving with life, even more so than the fishing grounds outside the city. If they outstayed their supplies, there would be enough to harvest (although he had never been much of a fisherman).

He and Hux reached the small cluster of buildings, what might have been settlement, an arrangement of three shelters and a larger space, maybe for storage. Or livestock, he thought, remembering the etchings in the palace hallways. Life before.

Although unmaintained, the seaweed overgrown, schools of mousefish darting through the blown-out windows, each structure was well enough preserved, and he and Hux selected one of the shelters in which to spend the night. Kylo explored the sack of provisions that the cook had sent along, finding it mostly practical, bricks of pressed plankton protein and seaweed-wrapped rice cakes. He shared one of each with Hux, who offered the harvest from his garden, bulbs of small tidemelons and a seedpod from his stand of kelp. 

Kylo hung his lantern from a hook near the ceiling, and they ate while the phytoplankton made their daily shift from gold to blue, lingering at the intermediary green for the usual hour. At home, they would be signaling the end of the day, and the city would shift, grow no less busy, the cantinas and neighborhoods full. His mother would have dinner with one of her ministers; they took turns, to avoid any appearance of favoritism. Rey would eat with her friends among the guard or palace staff. Hopefully, she had done as she promised. Hopefully, no one had gone to check on him yet. He didn’t know how long the deception would last. 

He let out a breath. None of that mattered just now. He was _away_ , farther from home than he had ever been and had already seen more of the world beyond the city than anyone he knew. And no terrible fate had befallen them.

“You’re smiling,” Hux pointed out, sounding concerned by this development.

“That sometimes happens when I’m happy,” Kylo explained, overly patient. “You should try it.”

He cocked his head, inquisitive rather than mocking. “You’re happy? Out here?”

He hadn’t thought it an unusual declaration, but the ease running through him—that _was_ different, he realized. He felt more untroubled than he’d been in months. Maybe years. “Yeah, I really am.”

To his surprise, Hux _did_ smile back—a real smile, not the sarcastic way he flashed his teeth sometimes—and ducked his coppery head. “Good. That’s good,” he said.

After they had eaten, they hung hammocks and climbed in to sleep. Kylo concealed the lantern, not wanting to attract unwanted attention, and it was dark and still in the room as it never was in his own, or even in Hux’s transport. Outside the window, the whale song shifted, perhaps a different pod or a different species, something almost mournful about it now, and he lay awake listening. Across the room, Hux sighed and rolled over; Kylo caught a brief flash of the speckles on his tail, always bright.

“Know any good stories?” he asked, thinking of the ones Luke had told him, and later Rey, before bedtime. Knights and princesses and pirates.

“I know the one about the prince who couldn’t be quiet,” Hux grumbled back. “It was his curse and that of everyone who met him.”

“Oh?” Kylo turned on his side, propping his head up on one hand. He wasn’t used to the hammock, but the cords were gentle enough. He could just make out Hux in the dark, his arms tucked behind his head. “I’ve never heard that one,” he said, matching Hux’s acerbic tone. “Please continue.”

Hux snorted. “Legend has it he was cursed by a terrible golden sea witch when he was young. Because he asked too many foolish questions.”

“And how was he supposed to break the curse?” Kylo prompted, amused. “There’s always a solution for those things, you know.”

“Has to kiss a rock crab,” he replied, thoughtful. “Running the risk, naturally, of losing his tongue altogether.” 

“Elegant.” 

“I thought so,” Hux said. Then: “If you like stories so much, you should tell me one, Your Grace.”

Kylo considered this, trying to remember those he had liked when he was young and the ones he had repeated to Rey later. They were all full of daring adventures and contentious duels. Rey had liked the sword fights best, but somehow he doubted Hux would. He settled on one about a journey, far across the sea to unknown provinces, a merman blown off course by a storm. “Well, first, you have to start properly,” he explained. “A long time ago…”

He was only halfway through the journey when he heard Hux ’s breathing quiet and slow on the other side of the room. There was no need, really, to leave his own hammock and check, to see those sharp features relaxed and smooth, even his perpetually wrinkled brow eased. The night Kylo had spent at the transport, he didn’t think Hux slept much at all but had rather tinkered in his workshop for hours—quietly, not disturbing him, but not restful. Not like this. 

Although he was shivering slightly, Kylo saw. 

He snagged his poncho from his own hammock and draped it over him. Watched Hux settle under it immediately. And. Good, yes. It was better if they were both well rested for tomorrow.

He lay down again. Waited for sleep to come.

* * *

The second day began much as the first had, with a peaceful swim through unoccupied waters. Hux hadn’t mentioned the fact that he woke up under Kylo’s poncho, only handed it back to him as he joined him for breakfast. He had shrugged it on, equally noncommittal as they prepared to leave.

After they had left the night’s shelter well behind, they paused over a deep canyon. Hux frowned, turning his map to and fro, as though trying to make sense of it. Kylo looked over his shoulder. “Could it be that line down there?” he asked, pointing to a gouge on the flimsi, vaguely canyon-like.

“If it is, we’re well to the south of where we should be,” Hux said, frustration clear in his voice.

“We could adjust,” Kylo replied. “Head north, towards the current.”

Hux made to twist the map between his hands, snarling. “Bloody useless rubbish.”

Alarmed, he reached for it, and then for Hux’s wrists, trying to ease his grip. “Hey. Calm down. We’ll figure it out, okay? It’s another day’s swim, right? We can keep on the way we’re going, and if we don’t find the ship, we’ll head north tomorrow.” 

“You want to add an extra day to this?” Hux asked. “What if we get lost? What if we need help and we’re three days’ swim from the city. What if—“

Kylo stroked his arms with both thumbs, attempting to soothe him. “Whatever happens, we can manage. We’ll be careful. Keep to the seafloor if we need to.”

“Just because everything has always gone your way doesn’t mean this will!” Hux said, sharply. Although he didn’t wrestle his hands out of Kylo’s grip.

He didn’t react to the insult, recognizing the look in his eyes for what it was: anxiety. He was trembling. “Hey, you’re not alone out here,” he reminded him. “Breathe.”

Hux sighed, shakily at first, but his fists unclenched. “Okay. Yes. You’re right. It’s not so far to swim. We have food and light and weapons. We’ll be okay.” He shook his head, then squeezed Kylo’s wrists back, just below his vambraces. “I’m sorry. It’s just. I never thought I would actually be doing this. I should have, by rights—but.”

But he had been left alone. No one to show him how or where. He didn’t belong in the city or wandering the open sea. He hadn’t said it, but Kylo could feel the truth of it as clearly as though he had. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “I understand.” It was a long moment before he remembered to release Hux. “We’ll take it slowly. Keep checking for landmarks.”

He dropped his hands, too. “Yes. Of course.”

* * *

They followed the map west, swimming over the canyon and a massive forest of kelp, wider than the sunken city and the ruins surrounding it combined. It corresponded roughly to a series of waving lines on Hux’s map, and Kylo began to hope cautiously that they were on the right course. Then, the map might lead to nothing, as Hux had pointed out, the ship lost to a tempest or fallen away under shifting sands. Still, something about it felt _right_ or _true_ , that internal pull he had so often felt satisfied by swimming this way.

Past the kelp forest was more open ocean than they had yet seen, the plain below heavy with coral and rock, but little else jutting upward in the water. Out in the midst of it, Kylo could make out a dark shape. A whale, he thought at first. But, no, as they swam closer, he saw that it didn’t move like a whale, no looping spirals as it took in the day’s meal of krill, trapping them behind its baleen. And it was alone. Not impossible—there were a few solitary species, but whales were largely social creatures, as he understood it. Smaller creatures darted around it, stirring up the water. Not fish—no. Porpoises, he thought, dashing in to attack it.

They were still some leagues off, but close enough to make out a massive shape, a beast of long, wicked teeth and writhing arms and what seemed to be dozens of gleaming eyes. He caught Hux’s arm, stilling him as he stared it. “What is that.”

He shook his head; his eyes were wide, the whites showing all around. “I don’t—I don’t know.”

As they watched, the thing grasped one of the harrying porpoises in one long arm and stuffed in its open mouth. Next to him, Hux made a small, involuntary sound of dismay, matching his own. He reached for him, taking his hand, and Hux let him, without protest. “Do you think that’s—what was in the ruins.”

“Maybe it was only passing through,” Hux suggested. “Maybe it missed us. And the city.”

“I hope so,” Kylo said. “Stars, I hope so.”

“Come on,” Hux whispered, tugging him forward, like he had in the dark. “We should go.”

* * *

Kylo was flagging. He didn’t want to admit as much to Hux, but they had been swimming for the better part of the day. The sea above them was beginning to darken; the lantern in his hand had started to shift its colors. They had, by unspoken agreement, not stopped to rest at midday, both thinking, no doubt, of the monstrosity that might lurk behind them. He had reached for his sword more than once as they swam. Not that he imagined it would do him much good against that many teeth and seizing arms, but—it was all he hand. Hux, for his part, kept checking behind them and insisted on swimming closer to the seabed as they went. Kylo didn’t argue.

He was about to suggest they stop somewhere for the evening and begin again, fresh, in the morning, perhaps by swimming North, when Hux seized his arm, halting him. “Kylo,” he said, voice hushed. “ _Look_.”

He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, turning, prepared for the worst. But Hux wasn’t pointing at any terrifying predator. He was pointing to a shadow against the seafloor some ways ahead. A long, triangular shadow, its lines too sharp and precise to be anything evolved in nature. And massive, easily as long as the kelp forest. Longer. Hux’s blunt nails were digging into his skin. “Is that—?” Kylo asked.

“Kylo,” Hux repeated, still soft, as though he couldn’t manage anything more. “ _We found it._ ”

He couldn’t contain the _whoop_ that escaped, bubbling up out of his throat, or help the giddy smile that spread across his face, or keep himself from reaching for Hux, grabbing him around the waist and spinning them both around, quick, sending up a froth of bubbles around them in celebration. “We found it!” he echoed far more loudly, all but shouting, and spun them around again. “Hux, we did it _.”_

He was grinning back when Kylo finally released him, reaching out to steady himself. “We’re not there yet, Your Majesty,” he reminded him, although it didn’t sound nearly as much like censure as it might, and his smile softened it. “That’s a few leagues away yet.”

“It’s not so far, he countered. “We can make it tonight if we hurry—what do you think?”

 _It’s late_ , he expected Hux to say. _We should find somewhere safe to shelter for the night_. Or: _we’ll get a fresh start tomorrow_. Instead, he nodded, “Let’s go.”

They swam on, all traces of fatigue vanished under their excitement. “Look at it,” Hux was saying, as they neared the hull. “It’s intact. Some wanderers might have been at it, but there must be so much in there. Think of everything we could learn from it, Kylo. And _build_. There might be whole computer components. Or droids. Or—”

 _Easy_ , Kylo wanted to say again, but this was the most excited he had ever seen Hux. Certainly the happiest. _Are you happy?_ “What would you build?” he asked, rather than cautioning him. “If you had everything you needed.”

“Oh, if it were that simple?” Hux asked, but his tone stayed light, teasing. “Naturally, I’d build a ship. One I could pilot, that worked in the water and the sky. Get out of here completely and never look back.”

The declaration struck Kylo almost physically, in his sternum, the blow resounding through his chest. Of course, that was what Hux wanted. He had said so from the beginning and often enough since then. How much he hated the city, how much he wanted to get away. And he had looked so longingly at the sky the other night, admiring the stars. Of course, he wanted to leave in a ship of his own. He didn’t have anything in particular to leave behind. “How long would that take?” Kylo asked, trying to sound curious rather than how he felt. ( _How did he feel?_ It shouldn’t matter to him if Hux flew away in a ship. If he never saw him again.)

“Oh, ages,” he said. “Even if I had all the proper tools and materials. And I’d have to movemy workshop out here. There’s no way I could carry everything I need back to the city.” He sighed, plaintive. “But can you imagine? Just going anywhere in the galaxy and seeing what was still out there?”

Kylo couldn’t quite meet his eyes as he said, “Maybe I can.”

“What about you, what are you hoping to find?” 

He pondered this. It would have been enough, he had thought, simply _to_ discover it, to go somewhere no one else had, to manage it on his own—or mostly—and show everyone that he was capable, that there was more, and they didn’t have to hide in their valley. That they—and he—had the capacity for more. To Hux, he said simply, “Answers. About who they were. Who we were. What happened.”

Hux flashed him that same delighted smile, all signs of his usual cantankerousness vanished. He flicked his fins, enthusiastic, propelling him just ahead of Kylo, and he watched, struck, as always by the sight of his tail, more so now, the memory of the stars fresh in his mind.

It was more of a brief flash than a vision, or may have only been the afterimage of a dream, most of them muddled lately, but for an instant, he saw them, the assembly of ships in the starry sky, blotting out the lights as they orbited the planet. _This planet_ , Kylo understood, a blue-green orb. Hundreds of ships, he saw, including the one before him. And others, like he had seen on the battlefield, facing off against each other, the empty space between them marked, clear, neither going any further. A sense of _waiting_ , something about the happen. Not only a war, something more fundamental than that, tilting. Shifting.

_A red glow. Sharp gray ships. The stars. A banner unfurling. Green eyes._

“Everything all right?” Hux asked, paused, looking back at him.

“It’s fine,” Kylo promised. “Come on. We’re nearly there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Kylo explore the sunken wreck—and are interrupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a brief warning for those of you who are claustrophobic: there are descriptions of some tight spaces in this chapter.

“Look over here,” Hux called, for what may have been the hundredth time that day.

He had been up and alert, eating breakfast, before the light had begun to turn, and Kylo strongly suspected that he would have left him in their small impromptu shelter if he hadn’t woken at an opportune time. Still, he couldn’t be annoyed with him, not when he was smiling like that and tugging on Kylo’s hand, pulling him towards the sunken ship with open enthusiasm. Whatever happened after, they had done this together.

The ‘craft was like nothing he could have imagined, endless corridors and thousands of rooms and massive, inert engines the size of whole buildings. He and Hux entered through an open bay along the underside, _a_ ccessible from the way it was lying, tilted, among the rocks. Inside a few small round-bodied flyers still remained, the same from the ruins outside the city. Small dunes had tumbled onto this deck of the ship, and an oyster reef clung, rough and sharp and layered, to one wall. Upon entering, Kylo and Hux disturbed a fever of stingrays, which swept back out into the water, fins flaring. 

They moved through the ship, careful, methodical, and Hux paused to mark the walls with streaks of bioluminescence to show where they had been, and arrows to indicate the direction of the exit. _How did they live in such a place without getting lost_ , Kylo wondered aloud, after they passed down another corridor, much the same as the one previous, all hard edges and stark lines, only softened by the water and drift of weeds _._ It would take weeks, possibly months to map the entire thing, Hux lamented, although that didn’t keep him from swimming as far as he could, into the next room, what looked to be a long barracks, enough room for dozens of people.

Now, he had moved on into a vast chamber near the top of the ship, and was looking out over the reefs and seafloor below. A nurse shark had made a home in a depression at the center of the floor, but it appeared untroubled by their presence, more concerned with a small squid it had trapped against the wall than two mermen. 

“They could have seen so much from up here,” Hux said, surveying the scene before them, both hands tucked behind his back. The long nose of the ship extended out before them. “If someone was attacking, or—“ He swam over to a console, running his fingers over switches and indicators, none of which Kylo could identify, all of it long dormant. “This must be where they commanded the ship.”

Kylo still couldn’t countenance the idea of flying a ship this large, let alone the number of people it would require to keep it running. He drifted next to Hux, regarding the wide blue ocean beyond them. “There’s enough durasteel here to rebuild the city.”

“To build two cities,” Hux replied. “And any number of chariots. Weapons. Armor. And enough leftover for a ship.”

“Is any of it usable for—that?” Kylo asked. 

He hummed and traced the edge of the console again, then brought out a tool to pop it open. Inside were bundles of cabling, wires, all intact. “I don’t think anyone’s been into it,” he mused. “Or if they have, there’s too much here for even a large group of merfolk to carry it away. A few wanderers could only manage so much.” He detached a cylinder from the central port and turned it in his hand. “Not that any of this was designed to work in water, mind you.”

“But you could adapt it.”

“Possibly.” Hux narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

Kylo crossed his arms and looked away, judging how best to respond. “I think you should try,” he said finally. “I think it would be good if we understood the old tech better. And you’re the best person to figure it out.”

“Is that a royal charge?” One eyebrow quirked.

“No!” Kylo said quickly. “It’s a suggestion. From a friend.” That’s what they were, weren’t they? He had only ever had a few friends, Poe and Rey, but he imagined Hux qualified by now. Even if he didn’t always want him around. 

His expression softened at the word. “We’ll find some small pieces to take back,” he agreed. “And I’ll see what I can do with them.”

Kylo nodded and turned to study the room more closely. “This place feels almost familiar, don’t you think?”

He looked up from stowing the piece in his bag. “Familiar? Like you’ve been here before?”

“Or seen it before,” he mused. “Maybe in a dream.”

* * *

They spent that day and the next swimming through as much of the ship as they could. Not all of it was navigable; the impact had damaged the hull, buckled some of the decks. They followed one of the interior maintenance shafts deep into the craft, only to find it crush partway through. Still, Hux exclaimed over the sheer quantity of the intact systems. He stopped in the middle of their explorations to diagram a mechanism Kylo didn’t fully understand. _It allows you to make leaps forward in space_ , Hux claimed, then attempted to demonstrate the method with two snails and a piece of kelp (it didn’t help).

At day’s end, as the sea darkened and the algae began to change, they returned to the open bay, and a made a small camp there, both wary of the wreckage shifting or collapsing and trapping them inside during the night. It could take days to find their way out, if they did. Lying in their hammocks, side-by-side, they talked about what they found and had seen, what they would tell everyone at home. On the second night, thoughts of the future crept into their conversation, too. “I don’t know if I’m meant to lead,” Kylo confessed.

Hux turned to look at him, curled under Kylo’s poncho—he’d offered it to him outright that evening. Relieved when he accepted. “Why not?” he asked.

“I’m not my mother.” That was the crux of it. He wasn’t Leia. He didn’t think he was like Luke either. Not philosophic. Maybe not even a fighter like Rey. He didn’t know what he was.

“Is that so terrible?”

He twisted the ropes of his hammock between his fingers. “The city needs someone like her. Someone steady.”

Hux snorted. “Oh, whale bollocks to that,” he said. And probably he couldn’t see the expression on Kylo’s face, but he added, “Not to criticize your mother, but sometimes people need more than to ‘stay the course.’ They need to imagine something new.”

“And you think I can do that?” Kylo couldn’t keep the wonder out of his voice. “Something new.”

“Obviously, you can.” Hux’s voice gentled. “I mean, we— _I_ never would have been able to do this without you. You did that.” He coughed. “By being a stubborn, naive child, but you—you got us here. Think of where you could lead the city if you tried.” 

He didn’t know how to respond, and an odd warmth had settled in his chest at the idea that _Hux_ , of all people, believed in him, even a little. “Thank you. For saying that.”

“You’re welcome.” Some time passed before he added, softly, slowly, as though he were on the verge of sleep, speaking into the dark. “You should trust yourself more, Kylo.”

* * *

The third day began much like the previous two, although Kylo drifted behind Hux for most of the morning, stopping more than once to rub his temples. _Did you need to rest_ , Hux had asked, but he shook him off, wanting to ensure they made full use of their time on the ship. He had helped carry a number of artifacts to their camp that day; they had been discerning about which they chose, selecting what had been difficult to find in the ruins around the city. Some hours in, not long into their explorations through what seemed to be an observational deck with long, wide windows, Hux let out a cry of surprise and picked up a small, boxy object from the corner of the room. He turned it over and spun one of the wheels underneath, smiling as widely as Kylo had ever seen him.

“What is it?”

“It’s a _droid_ ,” Hux explained. “I recognize it from the database I found. A whole droid, Kylo!”

He prodded it with one finger. It didn’t look especially remarkable, just a squat body on wheels. “Will it work?”

“Maybe.” Hux hugged it to his chest, beaming. “But first, I’m going to take it apart and put it back together.”

Kylo looked around, considering. “I wonder why we haven’t seen more of them.”

“Well, this obviously crashed. Maybe they evacuated.” Hux frowned. “Of course, anything organic would have been—years ago.” No part of the ship had gone untouched by sea life. Even now, an enormous starfish, larger than both of Kylo’s hands end to end, clung to the door of the room.

A pressure at his temples was the only warning Kylo had before a new series of images assailed him: fire and light and half a dozen massive ships tilting toward the world below, drifting out of balance and falling from the sky. Smaller ‘crafts tumbling out of control around them, as though a thousand strings had been cut. There was a peculiar, accompanying tightness in his chest, making it hard to breathe; his lungs and gills were working fine, pushing water through and taking in air. No, it was the echo of another feeling, one that didn’t quite belong to him. Although it did—all of this did, somehow. 

A steadying hand closed around his elbow. “Kylo? Are you all right?”

He didn’t have the opportunity to answer before something—something substantial—slammed into the side of the ship and tumbled them both backward, thrown by the unexpected impact. 

“What—?” Kylo righted himself and reached for Hux, who had landed awkwardly against the wall. 

He was stunned, shaking himself alert, but his eyes focused over Kylo’s shoulder, then widened. “ _Kylo_ ,” he said, grabbing his extended hand and yanking him close. A long suckered arm whipped past them. 

Outside, the beast from the ruins snapped its long, razor teeth against the side of the ship. It was too large to fit through the viewport, but it slipped more long, seeking arms into the room, grasping for the two of them. Quickly, Hux pulled Kylo out into the corridor beyond the room, and the two watched as it felt blindly along the wall, searching for them. Kylo twitched his tail, meaning to move back. Then, one arm paused and surged forward, striking the durasteel where they had been floating only a moment before. 

“ _Swim_ ,” Hux urged in his ear, holding onto them again, and they dove down the corridor, dodging another striking arm. Turned into the first intersection they found, out of reach. 

Another collision struck the side of the ship and sent them both spinning. The creature wasn’t large enough to move the hull’s entire mass, but it did jar the displaced upper decks, sitting unsteadily atop the ship. The beast struck the durasteel again and again, and the ship _groaned_ in a way that frightened Kylo. Nothing this large should make a noise like that. “We need to get out of here,” he told Hux. Another blow crashed behind them, and everything _lurched_.

 _“_ Yes, you’re right,” Hux breathed. “But we need to get away from that thing first.” And they both beat their tails, sending them down the corridor again, quickly, and through a maintenance shaft, dark, save for the glowing of a few eels, which scattered at their appearance.

Kylo followed him, frantically checking the walls for streaks of bioluminescence. But there were none. “We haven’t been in this part of the ship yet,” he said. “We don’t know what’s down here.”

“I know, I know.” Hux tugged at his own hair and spun in a tight circle. “But we might have to risk it.”

He chanced a look up the maintenance shaft—one of the beast’s long, whipping arms was feeling along the port through which they’d entered. He stared at the interior of the ship, lightless and unknown. “I think we might.”

Wordlessly, Hux took his hand, and they ventured deeper through the narrow passageway, machinery crowding close on each side. It was a testament to the gravity of the danger they faced that Hux did not remark on any of it, except to say, “We should go this way” or “Keep close to the wall—there’s a sharp edge.” Above them, the ship continued to rattle with the creature’s assault: steady _thumps_ as it threw itself into the wreck, trying to dislodge it or them, single-minded in its pursuit. 

Here and there, there were faint, luminous barnacles and anemone clinging to the ship’s insides, to the massive pistons and gears and drives, none of which Kylo knew the purpose for. Despite the illumination and his adjusting eyesight, he held tight to Armitage’s hand, unwilling to chance being separated and losing him in the dark. Then, he hadn’t dropped Kylo’s either.

Finally, they came to a dead-end, a place where the ship’s rough landing had flattened the way through, the durasteel compressed as though by a giant’s fist. Hux hissed in dismay and frustration. “Kriff,” he said. “Kriff, we’re going to have to go back the way we came.” 

Another _thump_ echoed from above and, following it, the sound of something falling.

“No,” Kylo protested. “We can’t. But maybe—maybe you could fit.” He felt along the collapse, looking for a gap. “Or swim under it?”

Hux shook his head. “It’s no use, Kylo, there isn’t enough room. And even if I could, I’m not leaving you here; that’s absurd.”

“If it’s gotten in, we’ll be swimming right to it,” Kylo protested. “Better one of us should get out and go for help. I can hide, there are a lot of crevices down here. Look, I think there’s a gap.”

“I’m not leaving you to hide in a—in a _crevice_ when help is four days away, Kylo,” Hux spat back, intractable. Even in the poor light, Kylo could feel his scowl.

Stubborn, of course, but his own obstinance rose to meet it. “I could order you to,” he warned him. “I will. I order you to swim back to the city and get help.”

“Then arrest me for treason when we get home,” Hux snapped, then went still. He tilted his head. “Wait a minute. Listen.”

The impacts above continued, distant and dull but present. Kylo shook his head. “I don’t—“

“Shut up and _listen_.”

There was, he realized, the faint sound of the current just below them, the water not as still as it should be down here. Kylo’s gaze fixed on the nearest anemone, the way its fronds drifted, as thought tugged. “There.” He pointed. “Down there.”

It wasn’t a large opening, maybe as wide as Kylo’s shoulders, but it existed. 

“We don’t know where that lets out or if it narrows—“ Hux pointed out.

“But it’s our best chance,” he replied, feeling the truth of it. “You first.” Kylo all but shoved Hux forward, ignoring his cry of protest as he tumbled through the gap. Then he followed. 

The current wasn’t so strong as to carry him along completely, and Kylo kicked through the gloom, aware of Hux just ahead of him. It was a tight fit; at times, he brushed against the narrow walls, scraping his skin against the metal. If they got stuck down here, he didn’t know if they’d be able to find their way out again, worming backward in the dark. So he kicked forward, letting his hands trace the edges of the tunnel, catching the shells of the mollusks that had made their homes, uncaring of the narrow space or the darkness. The water churned around him; there must be an air pocket above, he reasoned, or another obstacle.

He waited for Hux’s warning of an obstruction ahead, but it never came. There was only what felt like an endless journey through the ship’s innards, on and on until he thought the dark would crush him, and then he was sliding free of the hull out into the water again, almost falling into Hux as he did. He caught himself on his shoulders, then hugged him in pure relief. Shocked when Hux’s skinny arms wrapped around him in return. “We made it,” he said, hushed, in his ear.

“Well,” Hux corrected. “Made it this far.”

They were, Kylo saw, sheltered under the bottom of the ship, where it was braced above the seafloor, caught between two ancient reefs, long since reduced to their calcified remains. “We can swim along the bottom and come out the other side,” Kylo said, relieved. “It won’t know which way we went.”

Hux was frowning, shaking his head. “It followed us this far, though. What if it finds us again. What if it catches us in open water? We can’t out-swim it.” 

“Or we could lead it back to the city,” Kylo said slowly. He thought Poe and the others could handle it, but they had never faced anything like this before. “What are you suggesting?”

His face was grave, his full mouth a thin, even slash, lips pale. “That we kill it.”

* * *

It was, on the face of it, a simple plan. 

_It’s already dislodged the tower_ , Hux had reasoned. _If we can get it to do some more structural damage, it should be easy enough to lure it under the falling piece_. 

Kylo had been surprised by the suggestion. _You want to damage the ship?_

_There’s plenty of ship, Kylo_. _We’re talking about our survival and the city’s safety_.

So they swam upward to the command deck, where the beast was still worrying at one of the viewports and groping inside, searching for them. Kylo looked over at Hux; he imagined his own face was much the same, grave and determined and no little bit frightened. He nodded.

Hux whistled.

The creature jerked away from the hull, thrashing in their direction. Its dozen eyes landed on Hux. It jetted forward. It was fast, beyond fast, for something of its size. But Hux was faster. He darted out of the way, letting the beast crash into the side of the ship, before he swam away, out the other side. Which meant is was Kylo’s turn. He drew his sword and crept up behind the predator. Slashed at one long, oil-black fins. It roared in pain and whirled, almost catching him across the chest with an arms. Kylo dove just time, skirting the ship’s long nose, and it flailed after him, crashing around the base of the upper deck.

He was taking shelter behind a protrusion when another shrill whistle sounded behind, and the beast withdrew, chasing Hux around the deck once more, crashing here and there into the hull. Disoriented now, Kylo thought, distracted by its pain and confusion. He swam after it as it groped inside the ship, reaching for Hux. This time, he sliced off one of its arms entirely, dark blood clouding into the water, and it bellowed, throwing him free of the hull when it struck him. The blow resounded through Kylo, and for a moment, he couldn’t see or hear, only had the sensation of wheeling through the water, head over tail.

“Kylo!” Hux yelped, breaking through the rushing sound in his ears. And the thing again, its loud, harsh cry.

He struggled to right himself in the water, to get to Hux and lead the beast away. It had flung him well away from the ship, but he could still make out that immense shadow, and a much smaller shape, a flare of red and a tail the color of the night sky. Hux was harrying the creature, keeping it occupied, herding it towards the ship. The very top of the top decks had shifted off its bearings and was tilting drunkenly towards the base. As he hurried back to Hux, swimming as fast as he could now, he saw it begin to fall, catching the creature beneath it. It cried out once more in pain and anger, only for it to be cut short, buried under several tons of metal. 

Its arms reached and shuddered and went still. 

Kylo hollered in celebration, almost back to the ship. Yet far enough away to see the rest of the hull begin to careen downward after, crashing into the fallen section, pushing all of it toward Hux, who startled backward, tail flicking. He was quick but—

Kylo didn’t think. Didn’t have time to, only to react as he raced toward h, reaching with one hand for Hux. The other he flung out to—he wasn’t sure what, only acting on impulse. But everything slowed for a moment: there was Hux and the falling section of ship and all the millions of molecules in between them and Kylo could feel all of it. Every interconnected piece. And something more: a locus of energy, spooling inside him, awaiting direction, purpose. He reached out with it, feeling it extend beyond him, not leaving him as a spear would his hand but still under his command, spiraling outward.

The falling debris stopped.

Everything else continued, Hux, swimming backward; the sunlight coming through the water above; even, in the distance, a bob of sealinxes hunting near the surface. Kylo could feel the ripple of all of it, the world moving and alive around him, to the smallest phytoplankton. Except for the avalanche of durasteel, which he held, frozen, as though he could stop it with his hand. 

_Had_ he stopped it with his hand? It was shaking, Kylo realized, along with the rest of his arm. He was shaking.

Hux was staring at him, wide-eyed. “Kylo,” he said.

“We should—“ He couldn’t unclench his jaw enough to speak, his entire frame tensed, but Hux seemed to understand, pulling him back, the two of them moving out of range, and Kylo could feel his control falter and then give, the wreckage tumbling free again, crashing to the surface of the ship below them. He fought for air and consciousness, feeling lightheaded, dizzy. 

It hit him, not fragmented as his visions always were. But the whole continuous web of time suddenly was laid out before him, ripples from a thousand years ago to a thousand years in the future and beyond, the rotation of their planet around its system’s sun and the yawning of a black hole at the center of the galaxy and his city, their city watched over by his mother, Rey at her side, and the ship below them falling, dropping out of the sky, as though slipping out of place, and the floodwaters cresting over the surface of the planet and the people stepping into the ocean, changing, all as consequence, worlds bursting to pieces, scattered, and the balance disrupted, and the Force—

“ _Kylo_ ,” Hux was saying, probably not for the first time, nose inches from his, hands tight on his biceps, those green, green eyes bright with fear. Fear for him. And _Hux_ , flippant and unfriendly and cantankerous and brilliant and he could have been crushed. Flashes, too, of a small, redheaded child with a glittering tail wailing among the rocks. Of him floating near the console of a ship, flipping switches one by one, starting the engines, everything glowing to life and his answering smile of satisfaction. _His Hux_ and Kylo could only, he had to—he grabbed him and pulled him closer still and kissed him soundly.

It wasn’t a long kiss by any measure, but they were still both gasping at the end of it, Hux’s mouth hanging open as he stared at him. 

“Sorry,” Kylo said reflexively. “You’re—are you all right? I was so scared, and you—kriff, that was incredible. You. I—I love you.“

It was all he could manage before Hux was in his arms, clinging to him as he kissed him back, hard, their teeth clacking. “I’m all right,” he promised, when they parted again, only minutely, still quite close. “Are you—stars _, Kylo_. What was that? Did you?” Punctuated each question with another short kiss.

Kylo laughed against his lips, bubbling, giddy. “It was the Force, Hux. It was—real. I felt it.” He considered it, reaching out, feeling him too, the gold-green essence of him and also the taste of something alkaline, almost like metal. “I _feel_ it, Hux. I can feel everything.”

He leaned back to look at him, briefly speechless, then hugged him closer. “The Force,” he repeated, awestruck. Then, after a beat, he jerked back again, frowning at him again: “Did you say you love me?”

Kylo met his gaze, then leaned forward for another kiss, slower this time, lingering, the sort of kiss that sent a shiver through his fins. And Hux returned it, making a soft, startled sound into his mouth, relaxing in his arms. He looked almost dazed when Kylo withdrew and said, “Yeah, I. Love you.”

He blinked back at him, then smiled softly, his arms still curled around Kylo’s neck, fingers winding in his hair. “Oh.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Kylo journey home.

A songfish trilled in the coral outside, and Kylo twitched out of a hazy dream, more impression than anything, sunlight on the water, and the sound of birds. Just a dream, he understood, nothing calling from the sea or out in the stars beyond. He had, in fact, felt unusually settled these past few days, and if he reached out now, he could feel it, undiminished, all the strands of the life around him, in the water, and the fish outside, and the waving ribbons of kelp, and even these remains of the house where they were sheltering, and Hux. Of course, Hux, bright and recognizable, like light striking metal.

He was slumbering easily in Kylo’s arms, head pillowed on his chest, tail draped alongside his, nose whistling slightly, trailing bubbles, expression peaceful. The poncho was spread over them both. Not too worse for the wear, the gravest of their scrapes and bruises dabbed with algae, wrapped in seaweed. 

They had made their way from the ship cautiously after the beast’s death, gathering what they could of their supplies and scavenging, and swam towards home by unspoken agreement. Stopped at the first viable shelter they found, this shell of a homestead, what may have been a farm before the waters rose, now surrounded by quiet reefs. It felt _safe_ to Kylo in a way he couldn’t explain, although Hux had been too exhausted and dazed to question his choice. And it had proven true so far, their stay undisturbed after three nights, giving them time to look after one another, rest, talk. 

Hux shifted and stretched before squirming closer, settling against him with a sigh, tucking his chin over Kylo’s shoulder, face close to his. The contact sent a shiver through Kylo; he splayed one hand across the small of Hux’s back, increasingly familiar. 

And true, they hadn’t _only_ talked. 

One green eye cracked open. “What is that you’re doing?” Hux asked, voice muzzy.

Kylo frowned down at him. “What, holding you? I thought you might be used to it by now.” Not that _he_ was used to this himself—he kept expecting Hux to shove him away or complain. Change his mind. Only. He hadn’t. Seemed content enough for Kylo to do just this, these past few days. Didn’t mind being touched or kissed. Had curled his tail around Kylo’s, the two of them twining, exploring each other thoroughly, mouth and hands. 

“Not that.” Without moving, he gestured vaguely where their tails were all but intertwined, Kylo’s fins fanning wide across Hux’s, as though shielding him. “That.”

He squinted at his tail; his pelvic and dorsal fins were also flared. 

Hux pressed his ear against his chest. “You’re making a noise, too.”

A sort of _clicking_ , he discovered, something vibrating under his larynx. He tried coughing to disrupt it, but it persisted, involuntary. He thought of the young guards at the palace, how they were sometimes. “Um. I think. It’s.” He swallowed against the undercurrent of _mine, mine, mine_ in the sound he was making.

Hux blinked at him slowly before comprehension came over his face; he laughed. Not his usual sharp, mocking laughter—more of a low chuckle, throaty, somehow as intimate as everything else. “A bit late for a mating display, isn’t it, Your Grace?”

“Quiet. It’s not like I can help it,” Kylo grumbled and turned in Hux’s arms, hiding his heating face. “And don’t call me that when we’re. You know.”

He chuckled again and wrapped both arms around his shoulders, in answer, holding him close. After a moment, there was an answering buzzing under Kylo’s cheek, the same noise resonating in Hux’s sternum, matching him. His long tail fins brushed Kylo’s, as though in reassurance. They stayed like that, Hux’s thin fingers moving in his hair, stroking it, scratching against his scalp, tracing the edge of his ear, soothing, until he spoke again. “Kylo. We should think about going back.”

Right. That.

He sighed into Hux’s neck, sagging against him. “This place is good enough. We could just stay here,” he suggested.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy foraging that much. Plus, my tools are at home. And Millie. Your family’s probably worried about you by now, too. Hey.” He tugged gently, encouraging Kylo to look up, meet his eyes. “Why don’t you want to leave?”

It was only a feeling he had, low in his guts, a sense that once they swam away from here, there would be _something_ else. Not danger, necessarily, nothing so pressing. Maybe only their lives awaiting them, how it had been and would be. In any case, not this, not Hux holding him, or the kiss he dropped on his brow, or that faint trembling in his hands, his fins when Kylo leaned up to kiss him properly, mouth easing open, ceding to him, tongue sliding between his lips, hands slipping lower, down his scales, Hux eager under him, tail flicking. 

But he only let him distract him for a moment, however pleasant, before he pulled back and scowled. Unrelenting. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

Kylo rolled off of him, onto his side. It was impossible to sound anything but petulant when he said, “It’s nothing. Only.” He shook his head. “If we leave, this ends. Doesn’t it?” 

It’s quiet, save for the current, the fish swimming past the window, the creak of the hammock cradling them.

“Is that what you think?” Hux’s voice was uncharacteristically soft when he finally spoke. His expression—Kylo didn’t recognize it, the look in his eyes, gleaming, his brow furrowed, lips moving as though he was trying to form the word for something. He smiled at him then, reaching over to tuck his hair back. “Well, I do find you awfully tiresome, you know. It’ll be a relief to get shot of you, finally.”

“Very funny.” Kylo caught his hand before it could retreat and pressed it against his face. Feeling the light callouses there, from scavenging, tinkering. He had found he liked them, both the sensation of them and what they meant about Hux. “I guess, I mean. When we get home—what will that mean? For this?”

Hux traced the line of his cheek. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said, careful but earnest. Weighing his words. There was an accompanying flare of something—warm, bright—in what Kylo now understood was the Force. Hux’s emotions were like that, ringing clear through at times, even if he couldn’t name all of them, they resounded through him, too. “But I do know how I feel.”

“Yeah?” He had to look down, unable to meet that gaze, too sharp, too practiced at dissecting him. Not when he had confessed too much already. “And how’s that?”

Clever fingers slid down to his jaw, tilting his face up. “Kylo, you idiot,” Hux murmured before he kissed him.

* * *

“Okay, what am I thinking of now?” Hux asked. 

They were the better part of a day’s swim from home, the high hills around the valley just visible in the distance, the sea clear. They might have made it before the nightbloom if they hurried, although they weren’t especially, weighed down with more than they had carried to the ship, and neither of them were overeager to return, despite Hux’s insistence that they should. They had already stopped twice for a break, and then he had asked Kylo to show him more of what he could do with the Force.

He had thought, more than once, in the intervening days that he imagined it, dreamed it, that feeling of interconnection, his impressions of the past and what may be the future, and what he had done with the ship. Or that he would wake one morning to find it vanished, his tenuous hold on it slipped. But it was there, every time he reached for it, as though waiting for him, eager and bright. As though it _had_ been waiting for him, for years. There was something joyous, even in the smallest things, using it to lift a scattering of pebbles, rotating them through the water. 

But it was still unfamiliar, still new, using this other sense, and he closed his eyes, trying to focus on Hux, although that was easiest by far, Hux already recognizable, distinct, like picking out the glimmer of his tail or the shade of his hair on a busy street. _Thoughts_ were still elusive to him, however, even as he perceived what seemed to be innately Hux, precise, orderly, complex, the interior wiring of a machine he could never hope to reassemble on his own. The churn of his thoughts almost too quick to parse, like trying to pluck a single grain of silt from a spiraling current. Nonetheless, he tried.

“A shell—a conch. No. A snail shell? _A hermit crab_.” He opened one eye.

Hux grinned at him. “Yes. Much better.”

“Well, I still don’t understand why you expected me to get ‘servodriver’ when I don’t know what that is.” 

“You _should_ know was my point. You’ve been loafing around my workshop for two months, after all,” he reminded him. “I thought you might have paid some attention.”

Kylo rolled his eyes. He’d had to drag even the smallest explanations out of Hux, he didn’t say. “Did you feel anything this time?”

“I think so,” he mused. “Something like a tickle? It doesn’t hurt—it’s more of an awareness, I’d say. I know you’re in there, looking. But that may only be because I’m expecting it. I might not notice otherwise.”

They fell into an uneasy silence at that, regarding each other. “I wouldn’t,” Kylo said quickly. “I won’t. Without permission.”

“You could,” Hux pointed out, face still considering. “You could read your adviors’ minds. Know what they’re going to say before they say it.”

He shook his head. “I already know what they’re going to say without reading their minds. They never say anything new.”

“You could cheat at cards.”

“Why would I cheat at cards?” Kylo asked. He barely remembered how to play cards. Poe had taught him, when they were children. He hadn’t taken to it.

“Princes never cheat at cards?” 

“If I want something, I just ask. I don’t need to cheat for it.” _You’re the only person who’s ever slammed a door in my face_ , he didn’t add. One of the few people who had said _no_ to him at all.

Hux snorted. “Spoiled.”

He shrugged, too at-ease to be bothered by the accusation for once. Marveling, again, at the flickers of life he felt around them, even the smallest krill, even the glowing algae in his lantern.

“What about the reverse?” Hux asked, after a lull, the two of them swimming companionable silence. “What if I try to keep something from you? Could you discover it?”

“You mean _not_ think of something?” Kylo asked, puzzled.

“More like a secret,” Hux explained. “Or misinformation. Can you tell if I’m lying?”

“I don’t know. Try thinking of a lie.”

He paused, thinking, before he smiled. “Got it.”

He extended his senses into Hux’s mind again, finding it easier this time, as though the path back had not yet faded. The surface of his thoughts still lively as rain on the water, echoes of his suppositions and theories ricocheting _if the Force is real, what does that mean,_ and _can he see_ , and _Kylo, is that you?_ To this last, he tried to say, _Yes, this is me, I’m here,_ and he felt Hux startle, then reach back towards him, not so unlike taking his hand in the dark, and a flurry of thought passed between them, much faster than speech. _There, this, there you are,_ you _, yes, me, oh,_ _how_ _strange that I can hear you, it does tickle, doesn’t it, see, like this._ And the brush of thought back was like that, light as a fin brushing over his skin.

He almost forgot, in the commotion, to try to identify the truth from Hux’s mind, whatever lie he was thinking, how important that seemed now, and he snatched at the first thought he found. “Your favorite color is—yellow?”

Hux laughed. “No. It’s blue. Pale blue.” _Like your tail_ , he thought, clear as bells, then glanced over, as though to make sure he heard.

Kylo swam close enough to catch his fingers, squeezing them. 

“What about that rock down there?” Hux asked as they went on. “Can you lift it from here?”

* * *

Kylo wrapped a fresh bandage around Hux’s forearm. His cuts were already healing well; they might not even scar. They were just on the other side of the ruins, within reach of the city, but neither of them wanted to skirt the battlefield in the dark, not after— They ate a quick meal under an overhang, a small, empty cave, and went over each other’s injuries again. Even now, something in Kylo persisted, _we could go back, we could go back, we could go off into the hills and never return_. But he knew Hux’s mind was settled. Felt it. Whatever happened, this would come first. “There,” he said, tying off the seaweed. “That’s not too tight, is it?”

Hux flexed his arm and rotated his wrist, experimental. “No, it’s good. Not bad, Your Highness.”

“See, not so useless after all.” He tried to smile, mouth canting crooked despite him.

He kissed him gently. “Not useless. Not a bit useless. Astonishingly.”

Kylo pulled him into his arms, relieved that he went, unresisting, more so when he held him back, hard, arms locking around his waist. The two of them too tired for much more than that, quiet kisses in the hammock, particular touches, not instigating anything, only a careful cataloging of each other, as they’d done every night since, as if to say _yes, here you are_ , _all of you, whole_ , and when they had finished, Hux tucked his head under his chin. Sighed.

“I do know one story,” he offered after a moment, not quite whispering. “My mother must have told it to me, I think. I don’t know how else I would know. Would you like to hear it?”

“Yes,” Kylo replied, automatic.

It was strange, hearing Hux tell it—at times it felt like more than telling, more than hearing, the words reverberating on some more fundamental level. Or as though he too was hearing Hux’s mother tell it, the timbre of her voice, a language he didn’t speak, the sensation of her hand on his brow. _Sharing_ , he understood all at once, like a meal or a light passed between them. The sort of tale he might expect a wanderer to tell, not about sword fights or princesses or journeys home, but long-forgotten things hidden in the deep and restlessness of the waves, the summer storms and old mystics perched on the rocks, singing the bones of whales and the gulls crying overhead and findings and losings and makings and unravellings. It didn’t really begin or end, Hux’s voice soft like that, as he spoke well into the night. 

He fell asleep that way, listening to him talk, lips brushing his ear, and Hux might have slept, too, even as he went on, spinning a story older than the rising, than fallen ships, perhaps as ancient as the Force itself.

* * *

It took little, so very little, time to swim to the city the next morning, the two of them disentangling in the pale golden light, groggy and sand-eyed. They circled the wide edge of the wall, the now-known outskirts beyond it, already different since Kylo last saw them, a week past, some of the lean-to’s dismantled, new structures erected in their places, but somehow the same sentients standing on the corners, watching. If they were surprised by the sight of him and Hux drifting in with the morning tide, bags slung with scavenged goods, over their shoulders, their wounds bound, Kylo’s sword jutting out from the back of his poncho, they didn’t let on. Only nodded and went on their way. 

He hoped he imagined how Hux had drifted away from him at the sight of people, leaving space between them when before there had been none. He reached out, seeking confirmation with the Force, but there was something closed-off about Hux’s thoughts just now, and he skulked away from them, left with his own preoccupations. He looked to the palace on the hill, the three domes standing above everything. His tower. Saw it, briefly, as it had been, standing in the open daylight, un-flooded the roof and windows unbroken, people milling around the square, all kinds, and a ship setting down to land.

The whole of the city was like that, flickering between the time before and as it was now, the gleaming streets and canals, no less impressive in its way, but something else, a giant sea turtle drifting by, several children holding onto its flippers, the edge of its shell. And what _would_ it be, he tried to ask, uncertain how to pose the question, and attempted to reach forward, to trace the fibers to the next point, but it remained murky, indistinct, like looking through scuffed glass. _Not yet_.

“All right?” Hux asked. He had paused—was looking back at him, concerned.

He nodded. “Yeah. Just.” He waved a hand. “You know. Again.”

Relief washed through him when Hux took his hand again. “Almost there. Then we’ll get this sorted, and you can, ah. Rest.”

Hux’s transport was standing just where it had when they left, seaweed rippling around it, and the garden undisturbed, save for one small, spiny shrimp, which was picking at the tidemelons. Hux nudged it away with his tail as they passed, making for the hatch at the bottom of the walker.

Poe swam out from behind one the legs, his armor polished bright as ever, unmistakable as one of the queen’s guard. His face was grave, almost grim, as he met Kylo’s eyes. “There you are, buddy.” 

Hux twitched backward, scowling and reaching for his knife. Kylo put a hand on his shoulder, stilling him. “It’s okay,” he assured him. “He’s a—a friend.”

Poe had put him his hands up, indicating he wasn’t a threat, and he nodded. “That’s right. Just a friend of the prince’s. No one’s in any trouble.”

 _Well,_ Kylo thought. _Not no one._

“You got a lot of people worried about you,” Poe said to him as if answering the thought. “I’m supposed to bring you back up the hill immediately.” 

“How long have you been here?” Kylo asked, not moving.

“Since yesterday,” Poe said. “Took me a little while to remember this place. I might’ve waited inside, but that sealinx in there did _not_ want me around.”

“She doesn’t like strangers,” Hux told him, the clipped quality back in his voice, so unlike the Hux of the past week. He had crossed his arms over his chest. Was looking between Poe and Kylo, wary, hand still hovering where his knife was.

Kylo turned to him, ignoring Poe while he held Hux by both shoulders, not quite daring to hug him. “I—“

“It’s fine,” Hux told him, relaxing slightly at the touch. “I told you that you’d be missed.”

A dozen answers were lodged in his throat. _I don’t care. I’m going to miss you. I don’t want to leave. Come with me. Please don’t look at me like that. Please._ But he could only manage: “I’ll see you soon?”

Hux nodded, taking the second bag of scavenged pieces from Kylo, the durasteel inside rattling, and shouldering it. “You should go,” he said, indicating Poe. “Best not keep them waiting.”

“One thing first.” Kylo leaned in to kiss Hux, consoled when he kissed him back and even deigned to be held, if briefly. Like it had been. Maybe it still could be.

Behind them, Poe coughed, and Kylo released Hux, what felt like much too soon. “Right. Don’t spend all day working on those.” He nodded at the artifacts.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

* * *

He swam with Poe in near silence until the transport was out of sight. Then his friend cleared his throat. “So you’ve got a—you made a—that’s the guy, huh?” he asked. “You’ve been coming out here all these weeks. I thought you were just hitting the cantina or something. Blowing off steam.”

“Yes, that’s him,” Kylo replied, unconcerned, seeing no reason to hide anything now. He would have to tell Leia all of this, no avoiding it. And it was freeing, in a way, to have it known. Not to need to sneak off. He could make declarations, formalize his intentions, if he wanted, if Hux wanted— “How angry is she, Poe?”

He gave him a sidelong glance and shook the hair out of his eyes. “Well, she’s not happy. Rey convinced everyone for a few days that you were laid up, but someone was bound to check on your eventually. And you were just—gone. People worry when the heir to the throne just up and disappears.” His dark eyes turned reproachful, unusual for Poe. “I know I did.”

“Sorry.” Kylo didn’t have more of an answer for him than that. He suspected he would need one for his mother. For now, he admired the city, how different it seemed after the days away. Small, in some senses, easily contained in the belly of a massive ship. But still full, _alive_ as only the busiest reefs were, and now people nodded to them as they made their way through the streets. Poe’s armor marked them as important, and more people began to recognize Kylo as they approached the palace, some stopping to bow. _People_ , his people, and he felt the urge to tell them what he had seen, through the Force. To tell Poe. That they were part of the fabric of the universe, that something exceptional had happened here, a millennium ago, even though he didn’t fully understand it himself. It meant something.

He would tell his mother. He found he wished he could tell Luke, that he was here. Out of everyone, he might understand. 

Rey was waiting for them at the front steps, and she surprised Kylo by launching herself at him—not in a tackle or to start a fight, but in a fierce hug, knocking the breath from him and sending them both spiraling backward. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right,” Kylo assured her, hugging her back. “I know you tried.”

She clung to him a moment longer, like she hadn’t since she was much smaller. “When you didn’t come back, I thought—”

“We ran into a little trouble,” he admitted, showing her his bandaged side, the bruises. Winced when she prodded them. “But I’m okay. Everything’s fine now.” To Poe, he added. “We killed the predator from the ruins. Your people should stay alert in case there are more. Big. Ugly. Lots of teeth and tentacles.” 

Poe nodded, taking his leave of them, while Rey stayed with him as he approached the palace. She startled him again by taking his hand as they traveled through the long hallways with their tall columns. Passed the murals on the walls, the paintings of the rising, their people’s history transcribed on the stone, the family names. If he had the time he would have stopped to study them, see what more he could discern. But there was another matter: “She’s in grandfather’s library,” Rey told Kylo. “She has been since last night. I think she knew you’d be back today. In that way she has.”

“The Force,” he said. “Rey, I—can feel it now. The way Luke always said.”

She stopped and stared at him, round-eyed. “What happened out there?” she marveled.

“I’ll tell you everything,” he promised. “After.”

They looked up at the ornate metal gates together. Beyond them: his grandfather’s library, filled with artifacts, texts that no one had touched in decades. His mother, the white mantel of her office bright in the morning water, her back to them. She studied something on one of the shelves. “Right,” Rey said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

He didn’t knock or announce himself, only pushed one gate open, and ventured inside. 

“Kylo,” Leia said, not turning, hands clasped behind her. Her voice was even, but he could hear the gravity in it, that quality that made people stop and listen. “We need to talk.”

He steadied himself and nodded. “Yes. Yes, we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies))
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Leia finally talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, readers! It's been a while. If you started this back in December, thank you for returning to the story and for your patience. Sometimes creative setbacks take a while to overcome and it's been an unusual year to say the least. But we're excited to finally share the end of Kylo and Hux's adventures. 
> 
> Just one chapter note that there is reference to events in canon, namely the fate of Kylo's grandparents.
> 
> Please enjoy.

“You worried me,” Leia began, as much censure in her phrasing as her tone. On another occasion, she would have said _you worried_ us, or we _were worried about you_ , the whole of the sunken city a buffer between them. But instead: _you worried_ me.

It made Kylo bow his head, although she couldn’t see him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” It was the truth—and yet if given the choice again, he would do the same, all of it. But maybe she knew that. She had a way of seeing what was left unspoken.

She had a way. Kylo stared hard at her back, the usual white robe, the ornate arrangement of her hair, twisted and bound with glass and wire. She turned slightly, her chin dipping past one shoulder.

“Part of your thinking about things?” she asked, her voice wry.

“Yes, I.” He struggled to put words to it. “I needed to see outside the city. Or I—I wanted to see. Mother, there is so much out there. So much our people don’t know.” About their history, too, he thought, although he had fewer words still for that, for what he had glimpsed through the Force, the long woven lines of the time from before the rising and onward, reaching here to this place and this moment and the two of them circling one another so warily. “The Force. It’s real.“

Leia sighed, going almost slack in the water, more defeated than Kylo had ever seen her, and he extended a hand, instinctive, meaning to bolster her. Except he reached out with that other sense, too, seeking _something_. And found her consciousness there to meet him, cool and silvered and shining and unquestionably her.

 _Mother_ , he asked. Or thought.

 _Yes_ , she agreed. She finally turned to meet his eyes, hers dark, liquid, unreadable as ever, but he could feel the tinge of it in their connection, an acerbic taste: _regret_.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kylo asked, too stunned to shout at her, although much of him wanted to do exactly that. “If you knew all this time.”

“It’s a long, grim story.” She sounded tired already. “It has to do with your grandfather.”

“My grandfather?” he echoed. Almost no one spoke of Anakin, who he was or where he came from. He hadn’t ruled. The royal line carried from his grandmother, Padmé.

But that meant—

Leia held up a hand. “The chronologies were only ever stories. If my mother’s bloodline had any talents to that effect, they’re long dormant. Nothing like what Anakin could do.”

But if his grandfather had had the Force, then. Anyone could.

 _“_ That’s true,” his mother acknowledged, voice monotone. She swam to the window, perching on the bench there, the light haloing her, shadowing her face. Kylo hesitated before he joined her. “Your uncle has it, too, of course. And your sister. It runs strong in families, or so we’ve found.” She gestured to the collection around him, scrolls and fragments of stone and relics he didn’t recognize. Under the nearest bell: a narrow, metal cylinder, about as long as his hand. “The history of it fascinated your grandfather, and he collected all the information he could find. Studied. Learned to meditate, to connect with the energy of the universe, to feel the balance between life and death. He taught Luke and me, too.”

“Luke never said—“

“He had his reasons,” Leia interrupted, almost sharply. Then she softened and put a hand on his arm, apologetic. “Your grandfather had visions. You have them, too, don’t you?” At his murmured affirmative, she continued. “When he looked into the future, he saw your grandmother’s death.”

Kylo could only stare at her. He hadn’t seen anything clearly of the future, not yet, but if he did, if it was like that, if.

“He grew obsessed. He was determined to find a way to save her with the Force.” She paused before continuing, as though with significant effort. “Whatever happened—it was an accident. Luke was sure of it. But your grandmother died. And your grandfather was grief-stricken. I don’t believe a broken heart can kill you, but—” Her voice wavered.

Kylo grabbed her hand, and she wrapped both of hers around his, her gratitude washing between them like a summer tide.

“We didn’t have time to think about what had really happened or what it meant. The city was in chaos. There were dissidents who said the line was broken, that Padmé hadn’t properly declared an heir. Others claimed _we_ were responsible for her death. Luke was on my side, as you know, and eventually, we prevailed. But afterward, we were so focused on keeping everything together. It was easier to lock up this room and not talk about what had happened or why. Very few people knew, except for my mother’s most trusted advisors. Who became mine.”

Kylo frowned, taking this in, before he seized on the first question that occurred to him, some echo of Hux’s inquisitiveness, his sharp skepticism, as though he were floating at Kylo’s side, speaking in his ear. “But what does this have to do with me? Or Luke leaving? He didn’t hurt anyone.” If he had, Kylo would have known about it. Wouldn’t he? “Did you—did you make him go? For teaching us about the Force?”

It was difficult to imagine his mother banishing his uncle, but it would have been difficult to imagine any of this a month ago.

“We did disagree about it, about what he should and shouldn’t teach you. In the end, it was a compromise. And even with what little he shared with you, you took to it so easily, both of you” Her mouth quirked in a half-smile before her expression sobered again. “No, he left because of what he saw. Something to do with you.” She held up a hand, quieting his question before he could pose it. “He didn’t tell me what it was. Only that it was better if he left. He didn’t want to hurt you.”

 _Why would Luke hurt me?_ he didn’t ask. “You could have told me,” he said, pushing up from the bench and swimming away from her, toward the shelves with their unexplained treasures. Tried not to scowl. “That it was real. That I wasn’t wrong for—wanting to know more about it.”

“You weren’t wrong, Kylo,” Leia said. “But it’s never done us much good. And could do much more harm. I wanted to spare you that if I could.”

And what she didn’t say, what he voiced for her, letting the bitterness creep into his tone: “And spare the city.” Duty. Always that, what was best for the people. Even if it meant lying to them.

_Anyone could have the Force and they’d never know._

Leia sighed. “And spare the city,” she agreed. “It’s my responsibility. Yours—if you still want it.” Asking without asking: _do you mean to rule?_ It was just a few weeks away. A coronation. A pledge. His future sealed. There was an offer there, too: the chance to give it all up. And with it, an ultimatum. _You have a choice to make, Kylo, and soon._ _I won’t make it for you._

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” he admitted, feeling somewhat freer for having said it. He thought of Hux and the labyrinth of the city-ship. All the secrets it had contained. What else might be out there if they looked.

“Who is he?” Leia asked, her voice gentling again. At his frown, she explained, “I can almost see him when you think of him.”

“No one,” Kylo told her. He gestured to the window, the city beyond. “Or by _their_ standards, he is. The son of a wanderer and a—” He didn’t know, still, who Hux’s father had been, beyond his cruelty. It didn’t matter. He shrugged. “He fixes things. The old tech. We. We found a ship together. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen, Mom. It was incredible.”

She smiled at that, more warmly than he would have expected, had he thought to consider it. “Well, you know I can’t criticize.” Meaning his father, itinerant grifter that he was. But he had also never been here with them, not for any extended period of time, drifting in and out of their lives, her life, and Kylo could feel it so acutely now: her isolation and loneliness. What she’d given up for this, for them. “But then I also imagine I don’t have to tell you how difficult it can be.”

“No,” he agreed. “I guess not.” He glanced up at her, hopeful. “But maybe it could be different for us.”

“It could be,” Leia said, but he could hear the sadness in it, _for him_ , he understood, and knew she didn’t believe it. She added: “You should probably ask him what he thinks first.”

“Yeah.” He stared out the window again, over the city, wondering. “What happened here—the rising. I saw. It was like everything changed at once. Like we were the epicenter of something. Is that possible?”

“That’s the sort of question Luke would have loved. He had so many ideas about what it could all mean.” She ran one hand over a nearby shelf, tracing it. Kylo could almost see them, her and Luke, in this room, listening to their father speak of the Force. “But if he found an answer, he never told me, Kylo. I’m sorry.”

There was more under the apology, not solely, _I’m sorry I don’t have the answers you want._ Also: _I’m sorry I waited to tell you all this, that I kept it from you. I’m sorry to put everything on your shoulders_. That connection bright between them still. Or else the clear reflection of it in her eyes.

Part of Kylo wanted to snarl at her that it wasn’t enough to be sorry, that he didn’t have to forgive her for withholding the truth from them, for all she was asking of him, and all while claiming it was his choice, his decision. It would be easy to give in to those feelings. He pushed them away with some difficulty, his hurt and anger, a thrashing, spiny bottom-dweller with long teeth and venom in its stings, exposed, defensive. No, he wasn’t forgiving her, not yet, but neither did he strike out. Hurt her, though he easily could have, unthinking.

Instead, he posed the more pressing question: “You think it’s dangerous, don’t you. The Force,” he said. _Do you think I could harm someone with it?_

Leia didn’t answer right away. “I think power demands things of us,” she said, deliberate. “Sometimes, it takes more than we want to give. And more often than not, we’re the instrument. Not the other way around.” She looked like she wanted to approach him, maybe comfort him, but she stayed where she was, giving him room. “You remind me of both them, you know. My father and my mother.”

 _But am I like you?_ he couldn’t ask. _Tell me I’m like you._ _Tell me that this is what I’m supposed to be._ Knowing if he did, she wouldn’t answer him. So he nodded, moved to leave. “You should tell Rey,” he said before he went. “Now. Not in nine years.” It was the one shot he would take at her.

She bore it without complaint, although her face was so weary that he nearly regretted it anyway. “Yes. I will.”

* * *

He left his grandfather's library in a daze, as tired as he had been the day he and Hux left the city-ship, the tower collapsed behind them, the adrenaline drained from them, the Force singing through him. He wanted to sleep; he wanted to go see Hux, to tell him everything, ask him what he thought, if he— Outside, Rey was swimming up and down the corridor, chewing her nails. When she saw him and his expression, she stopped, stilled. “You should. You should go talk to her,” Kylo told her before she could ask. “There are things. You need to know. Things I can’t tell you.”

He must have looked as tired as he felt because, for once, Rey didn’t argue. She nodded and swam past him, pausing briefly to ask, “I’ll see you after?” _You’ll be here, won’t you?_

“Yeah,” Kylo agreed, rubbing his eyes, as if to clear them of grit. He meant to sound reassuring. Suspected he failed, the promise like a sharp pebble under his tongue. “Of course. I’ll be here.” Where would he go.

“Okay,” Rey agreed. “Good.”

He drifted away from the library, no notion of where he wanted to be except away from that room, the secrets it held beckoning no longer. He had the truth now, far less golden and gleaming than he had imagined. His grandfather's grief. His mother's sorrow. Rey would comfort her better than he had. He swam down one hall—another and another—moving above the staff and guards going about their days. Passed close under the vaulted arches, ignoring the lies scratched into the walls. Luke had known, hadn’t told him. Instead, he fed them fanciful stories about peace and balance and being at one with something greater than themselves.

Kylo struck the nearest mosaic, once, then twice in succession; his fist cracked shells and glass, and the debris clung to his raw knuckles when he withdrew his hand, his fingers numb. He’d left a small crater in his uncle’s portrait, cracks spiraling out from the center of his chest. Luke’s moonstone eyes regarded him calmly, as though untroubled by this treatment. “Liar,” Kylo muttered as he swam off again.

His mother had never called it a throne room, although that was its function: the great hall where she received their subjects, heard their complaints, ruled on disputes, and judged matters central to the city and its needs. It was presently empty, a wide expanse of space, unrelieved only by the glowing bioluminescent orbs ensconced on the walls, the circumvolutions of three schools of fish, and a marine iguana plucking at the kelp along the high ceiling, all unbothered by Kylo’s presence as he approached the dais at the far end of the room. Nothing their people had built. Another relic, perhaps another lie.

He had felt the whim to perch there before, most often when he was small, and Leia would set him down next to her. It had seemed like a treat until he understood he had to sit still and be gawked at, to listen to whatever mundane, petty matters were brought before them. Now, he settled on the dais, alone, looking out over the vacant hall. Felt something reaching out as he had before. Extended his own thoughts, self. His vision wavered.

He heard the distant murmur of a crowd, saw a shadowed assembly before him, the silhouettes of merfolk and other sentients, their attention entirely his, all of it blurred and indistinct, as though viewed through an evening haze. A sense of expectation shivered through him and an acknowledgment, _yes, he could have this_ , if he desired it, and briefly, he felt like he had when he was small, sitting next to his mother. Birthright, duty, everything she had ever taught or expected of him resounding through him. The circlet sat cold around his brow, heavy—but not unbearably so. No, he could hold up his head if he chose. Could silence the pull to the open water and all they might discover there. The Force gone quiet inside him, unused, sheltered under thick glass. _King Kylo, son of Leia_ , the genealogy would read.

Then, the scene dispersed, silt disturbed by churning water, the particles of it scattering around him. Kylo watched the stars through a wide viewport, the length and height of a wall, the field beyond dominated by immense ships, many as large as the one he had found with Hux, a few still more imposing, grander even than a city-ship. What it must have taken to build them, he couldn’t guess. But he knew, certainty clenched tight in his chest, that they were _his_ , this fleet and this army and the worlds beyond. All of it was his. Would be his. Cool satisfaction slipped through him at the thought. Another crown. Another birthright, what was owed.

No sign or thought of his mother, however.

Movement flickered at his side, the _swish_ and sweep of long fabric and a flash of red. _Hux._

Kylo couldn’t make sense of their conversation, clipped and laden with words he didn’t know, concerning troop and ship movements, the planet below. But he could recognize the tone of Hux’s voice: terse, irritable. How he had been early on, when Kylo was still an unwelcome intruder. Intermingled with an unfamiliar quality, a serrated edge in his voice, unused even on the most unyielding piece of tech. _Contempt_. That’s what it was. Clear on his face, too, his expression as harsh. Raw hatred writhing under it all.

This Hux _despised_ him _._ And his other self reacted to it not at all, as though expecting it.

“And, General,” he heard himself add. His fingers curled, squeezed; the leather of his gloves creaked. The Force answered, reaching out, constricting. Hux paled in response. “I won’t tolerate another mistake. Understood?”

“Understood, Supreme Leader,” Hux answered, tone suddenly anemic. Frightened.

"Good. Fire when ready."

Hux barked the order. Beyond the viewport, the explosions unfurled like ocean blossoms.

Kylo’s lungs seized, his gills twitching—it was all gone again as quickly as it had come, a swirl of dark water and faint stars. He hadn’t moved from his seat, but he must have cried out, made some sound or motion, because the fish had fled the room. The iguana alone remained, blinking at him, wary. He struggled to find his breath, to clear his head. It was only a vision, no different from anything else he had seen, those glimpses of the world before. He didn’t know if they were real, or if they were waking dreams. Fancies. Although they felt real. That internal sense, the Force, insisted they were real.

Which meant.

He didn’t know what it meant.

* * *

“Oh, good, you’re back,” Hux drawled. Not quite managing his characteristic surliness—he may even have been smiling, his eyes bright. A streak of oil smudged one cheek. His goggles sat high on his forehead; they bumped Kylo’s brow when he leaned in for a quick kiss. “Come see. The most remarkable thing’s happened.”

If Kylo’s uneasy night and misgivings showed on his face, Hux didn’t comment on it, only grabbed his hand and pulled him inside the armored transport, as enthusiastic as Kylo had ever seen him.

And the chaos of the workshop revealed why immediately; the small space was a riot of blinking lights and spasmodic motion, unsettling the water. It wasn’t full of quiet, inert piles of tech anymore, one or two gadgets occasionally made to function after hours of effort, but rather the whine and flash of so much working machinery. The boxy droid Hux had taken from the city-ship rolled across the floor, chirping. “Stars,” Kylo murmured, awed. “How did you manage it?”

Millicent heaved a sigh from her shelf, releasing a column of bubbles through her nose, and rolled over, regarding them both with exasperation and scorn. Hux scratched her belly absently as he explained, “I didn’t.” Seeing Kylo’s confusion, he continued: “Well, I hooked up a few things from the ship, just to test them, but nothing more than that. And then, this morning, everything was—well, you can see. I think even the transport might run if I clear the muck and algae out of the joints.”

Kylo’s throat worked. “That’s possible?”

“A week ago, I would have emphatically said it was not.” Hux’s expression turned thoughtful. “But I would have said the same of reading minds or lifting half a ship without touching it.”

A moment passed before he understood. “You think the Force is responsible for this.”

Hux shrugged. “You would know more than I would. But why not? Tech runs on energy; the Force is a kind of energy, is it not?”

 _It isn’t like that_ , Kylo wanted to argue, but he reached out anyway, to touch the little droid. It wasn’t the same as touching a living thing or sensing thoughts, but there was a brightness to it, a sense of _something._ For a moment, he saw them again, all of those ships, the blue planet below, the battle above. And, inevitably, as they always did, the lights died; the starcraft fell, tumbling from the sky toward the seas below. He shuddered back to himself, to the workshop and Hux’s concerned face. “Turn it off,” he said. _Ordered_ , without quite meaning to. Nonetheless. “Turn them all off.”

Catching his inflection, Hux scowled. “Why?”

“Because—it’s—“ Kylo struggled. “Just, please, Hux. Turn them off.”

It took some time, but Hux did; once he had silenced the last thrumming instrument, he returned his scrutiny to Kylo. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “You look like you swallowed a sea urchin.”

He felt the old impulse to brush off his concern and insist nothing was the matter, but it was Hux. He could talk to Hux. Did—haltingly, he related all his mother told him, what had happened to his grandparents, his uncle. Paused to answer Hux’s questions: _So anyone can have the Force?_ _How did he know it was the future he saw? These texts, have you read them?_ Kylo stumbled when he reached the matter of his own visions. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, _You hated me and I threatened to hurt you. I had hurt you already._ _And we—_ what _had_ they done? Instead, he skipped ahead to the cataclysm, the fleet slipped from the sky.

“You’ve seen something like this before,” Hux mused.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I think—I think it’s what caused the rising. Or they were caused by the same thing. Some sort of upheaval. In the fabric of the galaxy.” He swallowed against the dread, clogged, under his tonsils. “Hux, I don’t—maybe we should leave it alone. All of it. The Force. The tech. The ships.” An echo of old fear went through him; it wasn’t his, not directly, their ancestors’ panic at the fast-changing world. And again, there was that stark scene: the viewport, Hux, his voice bitten, cold.

His eyes widened, emotion flaring in them. “What are you saying?”

“It might be better if we.” Kylo gestured vaguely around them. “Stayed here. In the city.” Seeing Hux’s expression flatten, he hurried to add. “You don’t have to live out here all alone. There would be a place for you at the palace. I’d make sure of it.”

Hux laughed, humorless. “You discussed that with your mother, too, then?”

“It isn’t her decision,” Kylo snapped, remembering their conversation. He pressed on: “There’s plenty you could do—artifacts to study. And texts. You could be an advisor to the crown.”

“Forgive me, I didn’t realize there was a job on offer,” Hux sneered. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he treated Kylo to some of his old hostility, glaring at him. “But no, thank you, Your Majesty. I’ll have to decline. I’ve no interest in dead relics and shut-ins.”

“ _Hux_.” Kylo reached for him, stopping when he kicked his tail, moving out of reach. “Please, I want you with me.” _I need you with me_.

Quieter, below that, an echo: _I could order you. I could make you._ But _—_

No. He didn’t want. Not like that.

“Yesterday, you were ready to make something different of this place. And now, you want more of the same? Would you even tell them what was possible? Everything we’ve learned?” When Kylo hesitated, unable to answer, he sighed. “What frightened you so much, Kylo? Those stories about your family? A few bad dreams?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he tried. The visions or his family.

“I don’t,” Hux agreed easily. “But I never asked you to come here. Or to go searching for that ship. That was you. I thought—never mind what I thought.”

His ire was familiar enough, but there was more in his tone, a kind of sadness, and his gaze slipped from his face. _Disappointment_. “What do you want me to do?” Kylo demanded. “Leave the city with you? I’ll do it.” He could still, could give it all up, the responsibility, the power, with relief. He didn’t have to use the Force; he could just be with Hux.

But Hux was shaking his head, still not meeting his eyes. “I’m not asking you for that, Kylo. To give up everything you know for me. I wouldn’t.” And with it, unspoken, the thought ringing clear: _So don’t ask it of me_.

Kylo’s bile rose. “Do you even want to be with me?”

“It isn’t that simple.” Hux didn’t look up. Hugged his arms closer. “It’s never been simple.”

“It is simple,” Kylo insisted, stubborn. “Either you want to, or you don’t.” _Either you love me, or you don’t_ , he didn’t add, although he wanted to.

He frowned. “I don’t like ultimatums, Kylo. Or absolutes.”

“Just—just tell me what you want,” he tried. Hating that it sounded like begging. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

Hux raised his chin. His expression was strangely gentle as he touched Kylo’s cheek. “I can’t do that for you, Your Highness.” This last sounded not at all like an insult, for once. Was almost apologetic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies)) | [Tumblr](https://callmelyss.tumblr.com))  
> Thanks for reading! <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out the endnotes for chapter warnings! <3

Kylo traveled along the city wall, tracing the outskirts of everything his people had salvaged and built, the remains of the world before intermingling with coral and silt and shells, sea glass gleaming faintly by the violet algae-light. He had marked the circumference twice already, without purpose, unable to make the turn to enter the palace grounds or toward Hux’s transport. He paused, as he so often had before, to look out over the ruins and the sea beyond. The old urge, to swim out into the fathoms and learn their secrets, to heed the soft call he still didn’t recognize, returned. And what else was there but to listen and obey?

He veered off into the inky water, leaving the twinkling lights of his mother’s city, part of him—no small part—hoping to glimpse Hux around the ruined hulls of fallen ships, his bright hair, the quick, darting flick of his tail, glittering in the dark.

But it was quiet, empty, and Kylo hurried on toward the open ocean, trying to outpace the ache in his chest.

Past the ruins, past the valley where the city still dimly glowed behind him, the sea stretched out endlessly. A whole world consumed by waves and tides, only a few barren islands surviving the flood that had devoured entire continents. As the stories went, as he had always known, except now, too, he could see them, the ships falling out of the stars, the destruction below. The attack at his command— _Open fire—_ and it had been him, somehow, his voice, his words, his fleet and troops, his power. The Force had been his to coerce, subject to his will. Furious. Thrashing. Not as he experienced it at that moment, a faint trembling of energy, fragile and warm and shivering at his touch. Kylo closed his eyes, reaching for it, some reassurance that it wasn’t the same, that he wasn’t—

His awareness expanded almost immediately, faster and more easily than before. He could feel the sea around him rich with motion: a pod of whales some leagues away and countless swirling schools of fish and a drift of coral polyps seeking the rocks where they would back their homes and skittering bottom feeders crawling the sand below, multiplied until it felt nearly infinite, the life on this one small world alone. And he, Kylo, was part of it, belonged to it, not suspended in the sky above, waiting to rain down destruction. Leia Organa’s son—he could feel his mother, too, some leagues away now, and Rey, like full moonlight, and Hux surrounded by blinking lights, intent on whatever he was fixing.

_Hux, standing next to him at the viewport. Hux, pale and cowering._

And there was, alongside every speck of light and life, something else, in parallel: a bleached reef, dead and gray, void of any color or movement; the jutting ribs of a fallen whale, scavengers weaving here and there between the exposed bones; the scooped out shell of a giant turtle, upturned on the rocks, birds feasting on stringy remains; the yawning maw of the beast that had followed him to the city-ship, its vacant eyes and gleaming teeth. And all around him, the remains of what had been, destroyed in a moment by—his word, yes, it had been him, the emptiness in his voice echoing in that vast room, delivering the command without concern or hesitation, as he had before, worlds crumbling beneath him. Something cold slithered in Kylo’s guts, a premonition, his one warning before an icy claw closed around his tail fins, dragging him down. And again, he gave the order; the explosions burst around them; the ships fell. _Yes, this, this is what you are_ , something insisted: the same voice that tempted him out into the unmapped sea. Except he finally knew it for what it was: generations distant, yes, but it was his. _This is your destiny, our destiny, power and greatness._

He struggled against the grip pulling him down, trying to kick upward and out of it; he hadn’t brought a weapon, hadn’t thought he would need one. _Stupid_. _Arrogant_. Kylo could nearly hear Hux chastising him, clipped and exasperated, _don’t you ever think?_ Could see him swimming out, going to look for him in the ruins. His mother sending search parties, Poe and Rey calling his name, increasingly desperate. But none of them would know where to go; no one would find him in the deep, quiet places where white-eyed predators drifted. And that was best, easiest, to give into it, let it have him, if that was what, who he had been. He could spare all of them that this time, her mother her disappointment and Rey her hurt and Hux—Hux would never flinch from him like that, like Kylo would harm him.

He went lax in the water, allowing himself to be drawn into the abyss. Whatever waited for him down there, with all of its many teeth, could have him. Be satisfied at last. Maybe that was all it had ever been, a delayed reckoning, the scales resettled in their proper balance at last.

The Force trembled around him, his sense of it thrumming so strongly now he could feel the vibrations on his skin, against his gills, in the marrow of his bones. He saw, one final time, the hundred ships, his, over this small blue, world. Heard himself giving the Order, cruel resolve like an aftertaste in his mouth. Saw the sanguine glow as the weapons fired. The first explosions. He felt something _give_ in the Force, like a wave breaking, and another rising behind it, a massive undulation of energy and another, another, throughout the universe, and this—he—was at the the nexus of the disruption.

 _I know, I know_ , he wanted to assure it. He understood what he had to do; he would let the darkness have him, as it was meant to.

But then something turned, like being tumbled by a strong current. Kylo no longer saw planets and stars and ships, but the myriad connections between them: countless nodes bound by still more individual strands, all of it interwoven and all of it in flux, the lines snapping free and waving in the nothing before they caught elsewhere, rebinding, until the whole had remade itself, once and then again, something entirely different with the same elements, nothing wasted. The ships fell. and the waters rose, and everything shifted, changed. He could see his mother, his people, Rey. Hux. As they were now and as they had been and as they would be. New every time.

 _This, this_ , _again, again,_ the Force seemed to murmur, insistent. All the flickers of life surrounding them, the spiral of galaxy entire and the same in the oceans around him, as vast and as known, billions of small lives and deaths. Both. Life, yes. Destruction, yes. The man on the ship, who had conquered worlds and condemned them to burn, who saw it all as his, a birthright, what was owed. And him, Kylo, as he was now, addressing his mother, floating by her side. Sparring with Rey. Hux in his arms, tucked under his chin. The two of them, regarding the green sea around them, speaking to a group of scavengers, Hux trilling in his birth tongue. Leia, her hair gone over to silver, her eyes crinkling a smile, a crown in her hands.

Kylo thrashed, pitched back into himself abruptly, still feeling the grip on his tail. He kicked, lungs and gills heaving, the water cold and shadowed around him. He tried to strike out, as he had at the city-ship, to use the Force to free himself, but nothing happened, frothy bubbles churning uselessly around him. He was too deep and whatever held him too strong. He struggled upward once more, feeling himself beginning to tire. Maybe it was too late. Maybe he could—

A strong hand closed around his wrist, pulling him toward the surface. _You can’t_ , Kylo wanted to protest, unable to see who held him. _It’s too much, it’ll pull us both down_. But a ripple of energy followed, warm and sun-bright, and then he was free, that same sure hand guiding him out of the dark.

* * *

Kylo perched on the rocks of a stony island. Not where he had been with Hux, staring up at the stars, but much the same, and the sky glittered above him as it had then. Not that he was paying that any attention, too fixated on the merman in front of him. _Hey kiddo_ , Luke had said when they emerged from the southern trench. He had gone gray around the temples, his hair longer and wilder than Kylo remembered, the lines of his face starker. But still Luke. Kylo had been too shocked to speak or protest. Could only follow him here, out of the waves.

His uncle was bent, examining Kylo’s tail, where he had been seized and dragged under, the places where his scales had ripped loose. He was bleeding sluggishly.

“I’m guessing it was a giant squid or a clawfish. Lucky it didn’t get its teeth in you,” Luke was saying, applying glimmering silt to Kylo’s wounds. “What the hells were you doing out here alone, Ben? You could have been killed.”

“Kylo,” he replied automatically. “It’s Kylo now.” He swallowed, still staring at Luke. “And why were you—how—where the hells have you _been_?” He wanted to shout, but the words came out fragile, hoarse. His eyes stung, washing the world and Luke’s face blurry.

His uncle’s hand landed, solid, comforting, familiar on his shoulder as it had so many times when he was a child. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Kylo.” Pronouncing his name carefully.

He waited, unwilling to give him more than that, the pinch of it somehow fresh, the morning he had awoken to find his uncle gone, no note or word of explanation offered. Like it meant nothing.

Luke nodded, more to himself than Kylo. “You’ve been using the Force,” he began. Not a question or an accusation.

He bristled anyway, feeling caught out, wishing he could retreat under the waves. Felt exposed here, out on the rocks. He dragged a hand through his tangled hair, pushing it out of his face. Winced, when he remembered Hux laughing. “Maybe I have."

“I could feel it even leagues away. I’ve been trying to reach you since I realized. But it’s—difficult communicating over long distances. So I came back instead. I’ve been traveling for the better part of a month.”

“Why?” Kylo folded his arms over his chest. “Did you come all this way to tell me not to? Because you don’t get a say in what I do. Not anymore.”

Luke lifted both hands, placating. “I’m not here to tell you to _do_ anything, Be—Kylo. I only sensed I needed to be here.”

“Like you needed to leave?” And he knew, he did, that he sounded sulky, like a youngling, but here was Luke, after all these kriffing years, after he had needed him so many times, as though no time had passed. Hating, too, that he wanted to tell him everything, to ask for his help making sense of it, to hear what he thought.

“You’ve spoken to your mother, I take it.” He gestured an invitation, as he had when offering lessons or stories: _here, come sit and talk_.

Kylo hesitated, not wanting to make that concession, before he hauled himself onto the rocks next to his uncle, moving his tail gingerly. The pain had already eased somewhat. “She explained some of it, yeah. About grandfather and—what happened.”

“That couldn’t have been easy to hear. I’m sorry.”

 _I don’t want your apologies_ , he almost snarled, that bottom-dweller in him scuttled free of its cave again, meaning to rend and tear. _It’s too late_. But there was also that sense in the Force, the sure feeling he had had before Luke arrived, that understanding. “She said something happened to you, too. That that’s why you. Left us.” _Left me_.

Although he hadn’t said this last aloud, Luke still seemed to hear it; he grimaced. “Have you had visions? Waking dreams you can’t explain?”

Kylo nodded.

Luke made a satisfied sound. “Your grandfather believed they were premonitions. Warnings of what would be.”

“They’re not,” Kylo said, certain of that now. “Not all of them anyway. I’ve seen the past—the long past. Before the rising.”

Luke raised both eyebrows, some of that familiar, sparkling interest in his eyes, the way he had always looked when Rey or Kylo made some compelling point or asked a good question. “What makes you say that?”

And he could, yes, be grudging, stingy, with what he had learned, could withhold it—he had been left, abandoned, and Luke didn’t deserve to know. But there was also that sense of discovery, how it had felt to find the city-ship with Hux, to share what he could do. And here was Luke, who had told him all the old stories, given him his first glimpses of the Force. Kylo reached out, lifting a scattering of pebbles and rotating them in the air, like ships orbiting a planet. “I saw it. How it happened. I was there. Or a version of me.” He hesitated. “He had done terrible things. Was going to do more. But then—” He let the stones fall into the water below them. “Everything changed. The Force. Our world. All of it.”

Luke watched him, intent. “You’ve gained so much control.”

He squashed the surge of pride at the compliment. “I made. Um. A friend. He’s helped me practice.”

“This friend has the Force?”

“No.” He smiled, despite himself, thinking of what Hux would do with it. Summon tools from across the transport probably. “Although he could, couldn’t he? Anyone could.”

“That’s true,” Luke agreed. “There was a time—it doesn’t matter. But I dreamed of starting a school. You and Rey were the beginning of that.”

He waited, expectant.

“I saw myself hurting you,” he said slowly, halting. “I had a weapon drawn while you slept. I felt my intention to harm you. I felt—justified. Righteous even.”

Kylo stared, stunned.“You would never do that,” he whispered.

Luke shook his head. “I never thought my father would harm my mother either, and she died in his arms. I couldn’t risk it, Be—Kylo. I couldn’t. Not your life.”

He wanted to protest again, to say that it didn’t need to be that way. But there were his own visions, fears. Hux’s hatred. How Kylo had wanted, however briefly, to make him do as he wished. Had known he could.

“And the truth was,” Luke continued in the silence. “I was ashamed. Of myself, of what I saw myself do. I couldn’t even tell your mother why I was leaving, just that I had to, that it was for your safety. She let me.”

Kylo took a long, tremulous breath. “I could never figure it out.” He hated the sound of his own voice, rough and small. “What I did to make you go.”

He squeezed his shoulder again. “Oh, kid. It was never you.”

And he allowed himself, ever so slightly, to lean into it.

They sat like that for longer than Kylo could say, the sky glittering above, the silence growing more companionable as it went on, as it had been when he was small, when he sat and listened for hours as Luke described all that was possible through the Force.

“So,” his uncle said, breaking the quiet. “Visions of the past? What else did you see?”

Kylo considered this, how to explain. “I can show you.”

* * *

Kylo retreated to the palace gardens, music and loud laughter at his back; he hoped it would be quieter among the kelp. Three days had passed since his uncle’s return to the sunken city and, with them, an endless parade of banquets and parties followed, celebrating Luke, the royal family, the upcoming coronation. His mother was happier than he had seen her in years, some of the worry eased from her, although she still treated him to that familiar knowing, expectant look more than once. Both _I understand,_ and _it can’t wait forever_. Something of the Force in it—he could sense that now.

She had nodded at him when he left tonight; he could almost hear her: _Go on. Do your thinking_.

Not that it mattered—he still didn’t have an answer, his visions quiet since the incident beyond the ruins, the Force a gentle hum under his thoughts. Neither warning nor guiding him, he understood. Luke hadn’t been any help either. _I don’t envy you the decision, Kylo. I was lucky: it was never a question for me. Your mother was meant to lead, and I could study, teach, whatever I liked._ He had studied Kylo, thoughtful, after. _What do_ you _wish to do?_

He wanted—he wanted to go see Hux. Apologize. Ask him what he wanted. Beg him to show him every new gadget he had set to working again. Tell him everything he had seen, felt. (Probably, yes, omitting the near-death experience.) But he was as sure he couldn’t return without an answer of his own, his choice made. _I can’t do that for you, Your Highness_. Kylo scrubbed his face, biting back a low sound of frustration.

“I doubt that’ll improve it,” Rey commented, swimming up from behind him.

“Oh, go lick a shark,” Kylo bit back, although there was little tooth it, truthfully. He had been grateful for Rey, these past few nights, sharing in the truth about their family, in their uncle’s return, in all the tumult and pageantry. His sister shouldering what she could.

She perched beside him, her long, speckled tail dappled in the algae-light, and nudged him with an elbow. “Thought I might find you out here.”

“I hate parties.”

“I know.” She craned her neck, glancing back at the glowing halls of the palace. “It’s pretty strange, isn’t it? Uncle Luke back like he was never gone.”

“Mm,” he grunted, noncommittal, staring off into the darkly waving kelp. Like nothing had changed. But everything had.

“He gave me a lesson in the Force this morning like he did when I was little,” Rey continued, unbothered by his silence. “How to use it.”

Kylo turned to look at her then, gawking as she created a small eddy in her outstretched palm. “When?”

“While you were gone,” Rey explained. “I woke up feeling—I don’t know—“

“Connected,” he suggested. “Like you could feel everything and everyone around you.”

“Yeah. Exactly,” she agreed, grinning. Then, more earnest: “I’m not the only one either. One of my friends in the guard, Finn. I think he has it, too. He’s been having dreams. Like you.”

And there were probably more, sentients all over the city—waking up. Something alert and active now. Like the gadgets in Hux’s workshop, once dormant, now restored, in motion. And maybe there was no shutting them off again. Maybe there shouldn’t be.

“I know mum wants to keep the city safe,” Rey said, as though answering his thought. “But it seems like it might be okay. If some things were different from now on. You can’t keep change from happening, after all, even to protect people.” She frowned, searching his face with surprisingly serious eyes. Their mother’s eyes. “What do you think?”

It was like the last piece of his armor buckling into place, secure, fitted. Or Hux’s quiet _aha_ of satisfaction when he discerned the mechanism for a complicated piece of machinery. The water clearing after a tempest. The feeling of seeing his mother and uncle side by side again, the easy way they were with each other, even after years apart. Balance. _It was never a question for me_ , Luke had said.

Kylo met Rey’s gaze again, reaching for her hand, as he had when she was small, always kicking along in his wake. “I think there’s something I need to ask you. And don’t—just tell me what you want, all right? Just that.”

* * *

The way to the transport on the edge of the city was long. Kylo paid his surroundings little mind as he went, although he could feel the festival energy around him, lively, and more than the usual murmurs when he passed. There was to be a coronation tomorrow, and the whole city would celebrate, all of their people. Or: almost all of them. He sensed Hux well before he could see him, preoccupied with some task, the distant flurry of his thoughts. Even so, something caught in his chest at the first glimpse of his sparkling tail and his bright hair as he went back and forth between his home and the garden. Harvesting. A pile of gear lay at the foot of the transport, Hux’s scavenging tools, and at least a week of supplies. Millie wove through the walker’s legs, chasing a scattering cluster of krill.

“Going somewhere?” Kylo called.

Hux stiffened, even his tail twitching straight briefly before he continued his task. “Not that it’s any concern of yours, but yes,” he answered. “I’ve heard there’s more of the ocean to see, and I mean to do it.”

Kylo approached, although not near enough for Hux to lob a tide melon at him. “That’s true. A whole world to explore out there. More ships than you could scavenge in a lifetime.”

“Yes, well.” He swam by with a brisk swish of his tail. “I trust you’ll leave me to it, then, milord. As you have a city to govern. From your palace.” The sneer in his voice unmistakable.

 _Milord_ , Kylo almost echoed. Trying not to smile at him. _That’s a new one._ “I had the rest of my vision,” he volunteered instead. “Of the rising. How this all came to be. Who we were once.”

Hux lifted an eyebrow at this last, and there was hope in that, in piquing his curiosity. But he schooled his expression again. “How splendid for you, Your Grace,” he deadpanned. “You’ve seen how it’s all written out, I take it? Your grand destiny perched atop a crumbling pile of rock. You can rot with confidence now, what a relief.”

“I have, as a matter of fact,” Kylo replied. Well inured to Hux’s scorn by now. “Seen a possible future. Yours too. Although it isn’t written yet.” _We have to do that part ourselves_.

“No?” He set about bundling the picked fruit in his packs, ignoring him again. Above them, Millie chewed on a hapless crustacian, clutched between her flippers.

He pressed on, despite Hux’s studied disinterest, the set line of his shoulders. “It was never about that, about knowing what would happen. It was understanding where we came from. That this—all of this—was another chance. The Force trying to heal itself. And maybe us.” Hux was frowning like he did when Kylo said something nonsensical. He hurried to finish: “But we’re still connected. That’s why things have been changing. The Force and—all of the old tech. Because of you and me. Together.”

Hux had stopped moving at least, but he was hugging his arms to his chest, wary, as Kylo spoke. He muttered, nothing audible, and worried his lower lip, that green gaze darting away and back. “So, what. We’re stuck with each other? Because of something that happened a thousand years ago? That’s absurd, Kylo.”

Hux saying his name again shouldn’t have felt like a victory, but it did, flaring brightly in Kylo’s chest.

“No,” he said, smiling now, even confronted by his obvious impatience. “No, none of that matters. Who we were to each other before. What we did. Because this is new. That’s the point. And I want that—whatever it is.” He swallowed, suddenly nervous. “With you.”

“That’s—“ Hux cleared his throat and sighed, displacing a froth of bubbles. “I’m given to understand there’s a coronation tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” He and Leia had agreed that given the circumstances, given all the city would come to know in the coming days—about their history and the Force and the awakenings that had begun—it was for the best to advance the date. Make the line of succession clear before any upheaval. “I was hoping, um. That you might be there. I’d like it if you were.”

There was a drab pulse of misery from Hux, and he squeezed his eyes closed, shaking his head. “Kylo, I can’t. I’m not.”

“It is my sister’s coronation, after all,” Kylo continued, as though he hadn’t spoken. “And she’s demanding to meet you. My mother and uncle, too. You know how stubborn royalty can be.”

And he had, in the time they’d known each other, seen Hux briefly at a loss for words. But never so speechless as he was now, his mouth hanging open, not a sound emerging until he croaked: “What?”

Kylo waggled his fingers for Millie, scratching under her chin when she swam close enough. “There will be a lot to do after. My uncle wants to found a school to teach our people about the Force. I agreed to help him. But we’ll also need to do more exploring, far beyond the city. And I could use someone who knows their way around ships and reefs, who can read the stars and repair old tech. The crown princess thinks it’s important that we learn more about our world. I thought you might be able to help with that.”

“Kylo,” Hux said, voice hushed. “What are you saying.”

He could finally reach for Hux, taking his hands and drawing him close. Recalling that first day out in the ruins, how he had felt like he was swimming toward something important, an answer to a question he hadn’t yet asked. “I don’t know all that’s going to happen to us or what it will mean. But I do know I want you with me. If you’re willing.”

“You—“ This was the Hux he had come to know so well, the open expression on his face, not hidden under its usual layer of sharp barnacles. Two hands smacked him soundly in the chest. “You _arse_.”

He laughed, letting Hux bat at him, a not-unfamiliar tirade pouring out with each soft blow. “You could have said from the beginning” and “how the hells was I supposed to know” and “haven’t seen you in _days_ , you utter _nerfherder_.” And so forth until he wore himself out, going lax in the circle of Kylo’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sincere now. “You were right. I needed to decide for myself.”

Hux looked up at him, flushed and no longer scowling, eyes bright. “And this is what you really want? Drifting through the seas like a common wanderer? Probably a new monster trying to eat us every other week?”

“And nights under the stars and the Force and everything we else can find.” Impossible not to cup his cheek, to tilt his face up to kiss him. “Yes. It is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter warning** : There's a brief moment when Kylo contemplates giving in to the dark that has some similarities with suicidal thoughts. It doesn't last long and he doesn't ultimately harm himself, but please keep it in mind if you find that sort of language triggering.
> 
> Katie: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/katiesghosts) | [Tumblr](https://katiesghosts.tumblr.com))  
> Lyss: ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/aroseofgalaxies)) | [Tumblr](https://callmelyss.tumblr.com))  
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
